A/N: I feel obligated to warn you guys that this chapter (and the next few) get dark. Darkdark. Some of what I'm writing here is the most emotionally difficult stuff I've ever had to write. I've avoided mentioning things directly, but the implication is enough. I am loath to spoil my own writing, but I will suggest that you proceed with caution. If I had to describe it in general terms, it is that it probably fits into the "body horror" genre. This is where the story earns its rating.
I also may have included a cameo from a different fandom. (*cough*Phandom*cough*).
Distinguishing characteristics of his story, background, etc. are obviously changed, but the inspiration remains the same.
It was farcical to call the sub-levels of Aethlingworth a 'cellar,' Harry decided as they descended. On the first level, to the right and to the left, were identical wide arches that opened into lengthy halls bearing casks of aging alcohol. Tables occupied the centre of each hall but were otherwise devoid of any sort of equipment which might have shed light upon their use.
The walls were richly appointed with antique weaponry, wall-hangings, and occasional bas-reliefs which appeared to depict witches and wizards from so long ago in the past that Harry had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that they might, in fact, have existed in truth.
There were wall sconces with lit torches along the way, but Yax had chosen to hold his wand aloft with the tip lit for additional illumination, and the dueling shades of light caused strange shadows to pass over the carved stone.
Or, at least that's what Harry imagined was causing the flickers of movement, until he managed to stare for a long time at one of the scenes and he came to see that the figures really were alive and walking about, just as they had been upstairs in the great hall.
Descending another layer led them to an armoury. Steel suits from every era stood at attention, sometimes rattling their weaponry or otherwise reclining against the horse armour they were supposedly assigned to, apparently chatting with their neighbours, although—eerily—no sound escaped that might have indicated that actual words were being exchanged.
Still, it was hard not to have that impression when all movement ceased as soon as Caliban pushed Harry through the door and the entirety of the armed forces stood to attention as one.
He felt as though he were being marched through the enemy's ranks as empty helmets swiveled on their pauldrons and breastplates to 'glance' at him. Minute clinking and scraping sounded in a cricket-like chorus with each tiny shift, as some suits adjusted their halbards while others rested gloves on the hilts of their swords.
Relief was the first thing he felt upon leaving the room, but that was quickly replaced by horror when he saw what awaited them in the next.
In order to exit the armoury, Yax had directed him leftward, towards a recessed arch that appeared entirely filled with bricks, but a few taps of his wand caused the masonry to fold inward upon itself until a tunnel unlike the rest of the sub-levels was revealed.
No sconces lit the chamber, but low fires, banked beneath cauldrons so large that an adult easily could have bathed in one, cast flickering shadows upon the rough-hewn walls.
Of course, it was impossible to say what was brewing. In potions, unlike in stews, the ingredients used didn't usually float to the top and remain recognisable as what they'd originally been, so Harry hardly expected to be able to identify that one cauldron contained beetle eyes and another, salamander tails. Severus might have been able to, but then Severus was something of a genius about such things. What certainly didn't reassure him, however, was that a whole line of the cauldrons that were up on a raised step of stone against the wall were being stirred magically by what appeared to be thick, knobby bones. He easily imagined that they were about the length of a man's thigh.
Furthermore, the crude worktables that occupied this particular room were neither clean, nor devoid of equipment. The predominant shade he saw on every cutting board was a deep, rusty, brown colour, and pools of dark liquid seemed as though they were congealing underneath crucibles and on the metal bases of the scales that were in use.
Distantly, he considered Severus' many lectures on cleanliness and cross-contamination, but it wasn't nearly enough to distract him from the fact that one jar obviously held an assortment of fingers, down to the big knuckles, or that another contained fleshy, grey, wrinkled cubes in a fuchsia-pink brine.
He'd half expected that maybe the comments about his brain had merely been black humour. As it was now, trapped in a charnel hall with a man he understood to be a bona fide people-eater, he felt trapped between violent retching, terrified sobs, and some sort of last-ditch escape attempt that he knew, deep down, would only bring him to a faster end.
"Stop here," Caliban commanded, his fingers clawing into Harry's shoulder and causing him to wince. He scrutinised the dark-haired boy for a moment before he rolled his eyes and pointed his wand to Harry's ankles, binding them together for good measure. "Don't move or you'll fall over into the table."
Well. Harry certainly had no desire to do that given all of the offal strewn across its surface.
Harry could think of no worse place to have been paused in their journey. Every additional moment in the chamber led to newer, sicker revelations. Like the fact that the softly swaying shadows across the way on the wall opposite the cauldrons with the leg bones were dark-shapes hung from meat-hooks. He was suddenly glad he was without one of his lenses, as he could strain his eyes and make everything a bit more fuzzy. As long as it was all slightly out of focus he couldn't see the fact that they were obviously human in origin and lacking heads, arms, and legs.
There was another heavy oak door ahead of them, and Caliban approached, pulling away a little metal piece in order to peer through a hole in the wood.
Seconds later he was laid out flat on his back cursing as the door burst open from the inside and smashed into his face.
A deafening howl of rage came from the chamber beyond the door, and through it darted a sandy-haired boy moving as quick as a hare.
He almost barreled into Harry, but paused, breathing heavily as he drew up to him and recognised him.
"H-Harry? Come on! Come on, let's get out of here—" He tugged sharply on Harry's arm, still wrenched behind his back, but Harry lost his balance on his bound legs and fell heavily to the ground, shaking his head mutely at his friend.
Finally, he found his words. "I can't move! I can't—he tied my ankles!"
Heavy footsteps slapped against flagstone behind them and Harry saw the furious form of Wulf, revealed from the darkness by the ambient light of the fires as he drew nearer to the killing floor.
"GO!" Harry shouted at the shellshocked muggle boy. "GO NOW! GET OUT!"
Nicky didn't need telling twice. He bolted, his quick sprint—well aided by many hours of football practise in the school yard—carrying him far faster than the lumbering adult man on his tail.
"Close the wall, you fool!" Caliban screamed, his voice breaking and going hoarse near the end. He struggled to his feet and pointed his wand at the bricks, which sent them scurrying back into place to block the exit to the armoury, but not before Nicky's trainer had cleared the last inch through.
With a wrathful scream, Caliban finally found his feet and lurched forward, opening the hall again. "Find him! Find him, you fucking idiot!"
"Where—?" Wulf panted. As soon as he'd lost his momentum, he evidently had found himself out of breath, and he was now braced against one of the walls near the exit, clutching a stitch in his side and struggling for oxygen.
"Use 'point-me!' Use Homenum Revelio! JUST FUCKING FIND HIM SO I DON'T HAVE TO TELL THAT BLEEDING PONCE UPSTAIRS THAT WE LOST ONE!" Yax screamed, going red in the face.
A flash of green erupted from the room that Wulf and Nicky had run from and Caliban cursed. "Go, quickly, and if you find him, best simply to take care of the brat. We've no use for runaways. Erebus will understand."
Wulf took a deep breath, as though bracing himself—or perhaps he was merely still trying to recover from the bull rush he'd performed in attempting to capture the boy who'd outrun him.
"Oh—where's that rat bastard, Pettigrew?"
Turning on his heel once more to face Yax, and grunting as he oafishly scratched at a dry spot on his scalp, Wulf gave an inelegant shrug. "'Ell if I know—"
"YAXLEY!" Came Prince's voice, booming out of the other room, "You'd better inform me in the next sixty seconds that Potter's been secured and that this hellacious noise I'm hearing coming from below isn't a problem!"
Caliban looked about from Wulf to Harry and then at the open door, flapping his hands a bit in indecision as he calculated the best way to stay out of trouble with their employer. His breathing was coming in quick, aggravated bursts, and finally he made a growly-whine that sounded like the sort of noise someone should expect from a trapped animal.
"Coming, my lord!" He shouted back, presumably to where Erebus' head floated in the fireplace.
He let out another growl, his eyes sweeping everything before him as he rapidly tried to make a decision on what to do, before he aimed his wand at Harry.
"Moblicorpus," he chanted.
Harry felt himself lifting into the air, and he wriggled a bit like a worm as he fought the strings that felt as though they were trying to pull him into an upright position. It did him little good, however.
"Not taking any chances with you," Caliban hissed, his wand directing Harry out before him and through the dark portal that led into an ill-lit dungeon beyond the grisly laboratory they'd just exited.
There was a long hall that the door opened into, oriented in a way which was perpendicular to the laboratory that preceded it, and beyond that, another chamber, the door to which had been left ajar. Presumably, the fireplace was beyond the next door, for the world inside was limned in emerald light that spilled into the horizontal chamber, illuminating its contents with an eerie glow.
More than a dozen heavy, iron cages were stacked, two high, along the walls. The room could easily have been mistaken in its purpose for a dog kennel. Nearly all of them appeared to be occupied by the dirty, frightened faces of emaciated children. There were boys in some cages and girls in others. None of them seemed organised in any particular way—for instance the boys against one wall and the girls against another—except that none of them were mixed together. It seemed as though they merely fit their newest captives in with the old and made space as necessary, which was borne out by the conversation he'd heard between Yax and Prince earlier.
Yax directed Harry's levitating body toward the empty cage without another cage on top. Presumably this had been the one vacated so that they could conjure the latest addition to their collection after having captured their four newest wares that evening. It was empty and the door stood open, which Harry guessed was because no one had shut it after Nicky had made his escape only moments earlier.
Upon reaching the door, a short but violent blast propelled him into the belly of the cage and his shoulders and head met the bars at the back with a sharp crack. Black and white stars bloomed in his vision as he moaned, finally feeling his wrists and ankles release only after he heard the deafening clang of the cage door banging shut.
Latin incantations were being chanted and as his eyesight cleared, he could see the faint form of Yax stooping over the padlock with his wand in hand, probably laying ward after ward on the mechanism and taking no chances that Harry might escape.
Afterwards, with another harried curse, he strode away toward the door that had been left ajar, swinging it shut behind him so that the wood let out a crack and the green light no longer helped to brighten the contents of the hall of cages.
Rapid fire whispering started up in the immediate aftermath of his exit.
"Harry?"
The squeaky, nearly pre-pubescent voice belonged to his music teacher, and despite how broken it sounded, the boy was heartened to hear it.
"Ms. Tibbons? Are you and Snowdrop in here?"
"Snow's here with me."
"They didn't hurt you any, did they?"
Ms. Tibbons sniffed a bit and Harry was worried that she'd answer in the affirmative and that the three men who had taken an inordinately long time returning from the woods outside Cokeworth had indeed had their fun before returning with their spoils to Aethlingworth for the reward. "N-no. No, I think we're ok... except being here, that is."
"Did they let you go? Once you were in the cage, I mean?"
"I... it was so strange..."
He heard a shuffling and then he saw faint movement of a ghostly white face pressed up against the bars of one of the nearby cages. Inside he could see the silhouette of his music teacher's hair, mussed beyond its normal, fashionable messiness and the ghost-like visage that had attracted his attention. It was Snowdrop, looking like a mournful wraith of a young girl from one of Nicky's favourite low-budget horror films.
"We couldn't talk! Why couldn't we talk? I couldn't scream, or move, or... or anything! Gammy told me to fight back," she stuttered, her voice bordering on sobbing, "what am I s'posta tell her?"
"It von't matter."
Together with Snowdrop and Ms. Tibbons, Harry glanced around, looking for who had spoken.
Whoever it was had sounded mournful and quite certain of the message he'd imparted. The way the large hall seemed to echo made it impossible to identify the direction from whence it came.
Crawling now on his knees and using the movement to roll out his wrists and shoulders a bit, Harry pressed his face into the bars so that there was one against each of his cheeks. He closed his right eye so he could look exclusively through his left that still had a good lens in front of it.
"Who said that?" He demanded. He was trying for the self-assured tone he had heard his kuya use before whenever Snape was feigning confidence but was really quaking in his boots. Just like that day the previous summer when he'd first met Yax and Wulf.
From the other cages the drawn faces of children spanning the approximate ages of three to twelve peered out. All of them were dirty and underfed, with hair that was matted and clothes that probably hadn't been washed since the day they'd been thrown into the Aethlingworth dungeon.
A loud exclamation from the room Yax had retreated to interrupted them all and drew the attention of every pair of eyes in the room for a brief moment, until it seemed as though he wasn't about to emerge from the door any time soon.
"Who says it doesn't matter?" Harry challenged again, sitting up tall on his knees and once again examining every cage in the room.
It had been a boy, by the sound of it, so he ignored the cages containing girls...
"That was Erich," admitted one older girl. She appeared on the cusp of adolescence; her face spattered with a spray of dark freckles that stood out in heavy contrast against the pallor of her skin. Her hair was a dark, ashy-brown, and was so stringy and greasy that she'd pushed it back from her temples—presumably to keep it out of her face—and it simply stayed there, without the aid of an elastic.
She coughed, sounding as though with each spasm that she might hack up a lung, but then pointed up toward the vault in the ceiling.
Harry followed her finger with his eyes. The already low light barely reached into the rafters, but from a heavy wooden crossbeam he thought he saw the silhouette of a great birdcage, dangling from a ring that had been set into the beam's side.
Two spindly legs hung down from the floor of the cage, poking through the wide slats near the bottom, and he saw a pair of hands tightening and loosening spasmodically over the bars, closer to the top.
Harry's eyes widened. There was no way, given the length of the boy's shins, that the cage could possibly be big enough for him to even sit up properly.
"You said it didn't matter? Do they keep you up there all the time?" He asked, thinking that if that were indeed the case, it certainly made sense why the boy in the cage would conclude that their prospects were hopeless.
"Not all ze time," Erich rasped in response. The more he spoke, it became apparent that the boy had an accent, although Harry couldn't tell where he might have been from. "Zis iz ze first time in a few munts zat zey put me here. I do not know vhen zhey vill let me out, zough."
Ms. Tibbons emitted a soft gasp. "Months? You've been here for... for months? W-we could be here for months..?"
Erich's cage rang with a short bark of mirthless laughter. "No. I havebeen here for a year, at leazt."
"Erich's been here longest," the same girl from earlier piped up in a stage whisper. "They won't sell him..."
"But you von't lazt probably even a day," Erich sighed.
"Who won't?" Harry grilled him, his voice emerging panicked.
"Ze lady. Iz she your mutter?"
His face screwing up in confusion, Harry leant back from the bars momentarily. "My mooter?"
"Your mama?"
"I'm their teacher," Ms. Tibbons told the boy. "The three that were brought in today... they're my students."
"Ah. I am sorry Mz. Lady, becauze I do not tink zat you vill lazt very long," the boy informed her, sounding regretful.
Snowdrop stood, the top of her head just beneath the ceiling of her cage. She stepped forward and rattled the bars with her hands as might have a captive monkey. "What do you know!? You said it won't matter, like there's no hope at all but Nicky got out! If Nicky—"
"Ze boy got out becauze I put a pieze of clot over ze lock vhen zey moved us boyz from our cage."
"Nu-uh, you were too busy trying to escape yourself," Snowdrop argued, crossing her arms.
Erich let out a low laugh. "It might have looked zat vay, but I have never before seen anyone actually ezcape."
"We knew we wouldn't make it," another boy piped up. "Not with three of 'em. The only point was to jam the lock so we could get out after they were done shuffling us around... only, they didn't put us back in the same cage, and that new boy broke out while the big'un was still in here. We were gonna wait until they were all gone for a while and then try—"
"That wouldn't have mattered," Harry informed them, shaking his head. He settled so he sat cross-legged at the edge of his cage, leaning his forehead against the bars. "To get out of the lab with all the cauldrons you need a wand and a spell. Nicky only made it out 'cause Yax hadn't closed the wall yet. And have any of you got a wand?"
"A what?! Potter, you've lost it—"
"Snowdrop, shh," Ms. Tibbons held a finger to her lips to quiet the girl down, for her voice had begun to rise to the point where Yax might have conceivably heard them from the other room.
"He's a certified tapper! Spells! Wands!"
Their teacher snatched Snowdrop's fingers away from the girl's forehead where she was sharply rapping them against her cranium to illustrate her point. "That isn't kind, Snowdrop. What would you call it? What we saw when they were taking us?" Ms. Tibbons asked her student, her voice uncharacteristically sharp. "When we couldn't speak? What did that look like to you? Or appearing here out of thin air? Or making another cage out of nothing—"
Erich's cage creaked above them as he shifted his weight, one leg swinging through the air. "Stay here long enough and you vill see zat zese tingz are not crazy, little girl."
"I'm not little—!"
"You are little minded," Erich returned. "But you vill see."
He breathed in deeply and began rotating one foot with his ankle as the axis, seemingly for no other reason than to entertain himself in his cage.
In the scant lighting Harry thought he saw that the boy had two toes missing, and with the movement, the light shifted over the skin of his fleshless calves, exposing deep scars cut into the muscle, running from the soles of his feet, seemingly to his knees and possibly beyond that.
"Firzt zey vill take your teacher—I am very sorry Mz. Lady, becauze you seem very nice—and zey vill not boter to... er... make it quiet? She vill be taken to ze next room over—"
"The cauldron room," Harry supplied with a shudder.
"Perhaps. None of us have seen it. But ve know zat zat is vhere zey take ze adults, if ve had an adult vit us."
"They... they torture them in there?" Snowdrop asked, her terrible curiosity overriding her natural combativeness.
"I do not tink so," Erich replied.
"They like start screaming," a boy in the next cage over took up the thread from the child trapped in the birdcage. He was short, with dense, curly, brown hair that was growing uncontrollably in a halo around his head, and his dark skin seemed to have blue highlights where the fickle light hit him. "As soon as they see whatever's in there and then the door shuts, and we still hear 'em screaming, but then one of those blokes with their magic sticks will yell something, there's a flash of green light, and they don't scream anymore."
"Seems like it's over quick," the girl from before added. Beside her a very young girl—no older than a toddler really—began keening and attempting to crawl into her lap. The child turned her face into the older girl's neck, where she'd looped her arms around, and began moaning a word that sounded horribly like "Mumma."
"Shh, Bethy, shh..." the girl whispered, her own arms winding their way around the child's back as she shifted her meagre weight forward and back to rock her.
"They..." Ms. Tibbons swallowed audibly. "All the adults...?"
"Uzually on ze first day," Erich answered from above. "But zey don't often have an auction so soon after you are brought in. I heard zem saying zat zey want to ready you all immediately—"
"What about you?" Harry asked, scowling up at the other boy. "You said they wanted to ready us, but why are you special?"
"Spezial!" Erich spat, the cage rattling a bit as he shifted himself. His toes curled under, possibly from anger. "Ja, I am so spezial! Zeir very spezial boy zat zey take into ze room over zere," one skeletal hand pointed to the door Yax disappeared behind, "zey feed me spezial cakes before every meeting of ze Fortunate and vhen I vake up, I am mizzing someting elze! Maybe zis time a bit of skin, ja? Or zey vill say zat zey took someting small, like a blood vezzel or maybe two?"
Harry blanched and backed away from the bars, as if he could physically remove himself from what he was hearing. "I... I'm sorry—"
"Or maybe my toes, eh? Or my noze!"
Erich leaned forwards finally, until his face was pressed up against the slats of the birdcage. His ruinous visage was a desolate wasteland of craters running through flesh. His cheeks were like a river delta, cut through with deep trenches of scar-tissue, and... indeed... his nose was missing. Cut off from his face entirely, so that a gaping, black hole bisected by his septum was all that remained. His lips, in the same fashion, looked to have been cut away so that they did not cover his teeth, several of which were missing, probably for the same reason as every other injury inflicted upon his young body.
"Perhaps next zey vill take my tongue, ja? Zat vay I vill not have to wazte my breat on you stupid newcomers!"
"Don't say that," The girl holding the child begged him, her voice soft.
"And vhy not!?"
"You've 'elped us, mate," admitted a boy from a cage far down the way. "Tol' us... you tol' us we should say our goodbyes, an' that we loved our mums 'n da's—an' we did."
There was a suspicious amount of sniffling coming from all over the hall, and Harry wondered how many of the children had been brought in with their parents.
Suddenly, he was almost grateful that he was alone.
He would never have to remember the moment where his mother went from living to dead before his eyes.
To these children it was a blessing to say goodbye. To know that they ought to say the things they'd always want to remember to have said. To Harry, he felt momentarily grateful that he'd never faced a moment where he'd had to. He'd had no warning and had been young enough that he had no memories...
Now, he was alone in the world. Perhaps Severus might miss him a bit, but that was nothing compared to having the one who birthed you—sheltered you, fed you, kissed your cheeks and tickled the soles of your feet—ripped out of your arms. He was frightened of what was to come, yes... but the deepest cut had already been inflicted. Mercifully early in life, too.
"How many of you came with your parents?" Ms. Tibbons whispered, giving voice to a question Harry had pondered earlier.
"It's hard to say," someone answered. "I was sent to the shops by Mum... I don't think she was ever here. I hope she wasn't..."
"Some of ze younger ones vere brought in alone," Erich continued. "Zey sell fazt too."
"Sell?"
"Zat is vat ve are for. All of us. Spezial..." he repeated the word again, his grip tightening around the bars. "I am not. Our parents vere lucky becauze zey are kilt before zey get carved up, see? Zey tell me tings. Tings I do not want to know. Parts of ze eye are uzeful in one ting or anutur, but not before ve are ten. I turn ten in two veeks.
"You see? Zey take parts of us as ve get older. Little bit at a time. Vit ze adults? It does not matter. Zey take everyting at one time and sell it vhenever zey have it to sell. No auctions."
"You belong to them?" Harry ventured to ask, hoping Erich wouldn't ignore his question because of how belligerent he'd been earlier. "You're their... their donor?" He asked, using the word he'd heard Severus and Yax using the year before.
Hoots of laughter ricocheted off the high ceiling. The boy either had the darkest sense of humour Harry had ever encountered, or he was quite mad.
"I am ze hors d'oeuvres!"
In her cage, Ms. Tibbons gave a little gasp of horror. "Oh!"
"None of zem zat are here care to do vhat zeir friends at ze auctions do. Vhat ze real... oh vhat do zey call zem? Alchemizts! Yes... yes... and Pot-iun Mazters, some of zem—do. Zey call me zeir 'sampler.' Zey take vhat zey want of me and pass me around to ze oter bruters so zat zey may inspect ze quality zat ze vizards here offer."
"Potions masters," Harry whispered, his breath feeling as though it was coming in painful gasps. "They're all... they're all wanting us for parts?"
"No, not all." No laughter followed. Apparently the older boy didn't find this amusing even in a hopelessly ironic way. "I am told... er... I am told some of ze bruters buy children for ah..."
He sighed.
"Don't say it," Ms. Tibbons broke in, her voice sounding somewhat faint. "There's no need."
"Is zere not?"
"No," she said again, firmly. "I think... I think that your meaning is well enough understood."
"The dance," Snowdrop whispered, sounding appalled.
Frustrated, Harry felt as though he must have been the only one who didn't understand. He'd still never gotten a straight answer from an adult on whatever this dumb dance was. Before, it had always seemed the sort of thing that people chuckled over like some great big joke that everyone in the world was in on except himself, but in this context, it seemed as though it might have been on level with being vivisected for potions ingredients.
"Ah... yes, I suppoze zat it could be called... zat." When Harry glanced up, he saw the other boy grimace. A terrible sight, indeed. "Zat oter boy? Ze one zat ze fat vizard, Vulf, is looking for, is he wit you tree?"
"Nicky's my brother," Snowdrop answered. It really said something that she would admit to such a thing, as she normally acted as though they were not related, even though everyone at Rowky Syke—and the entirety of the town of Backbarrow—knew otherwise.
"I'm sorry you didn't get to say goodbye," the dark-haired girl whispered overtop the head of the little child she still held.
"I don't need to say goodbye," Snowdrop snapped, standing to her full height in the cage and staring down the other girl, who was opposite her against the other wall. "Nicky's gonna give'em what for and then my otherbrother is gonna come and they won't know what to do—!"
Harry thought this a startling show of both bravado and a hitherto unprecedented acknowledgement of Severus as her kinsman. It was true that they had begun to warm towards one another in the previous few weeks, but Snowdrop never allowed Snape to treat her like real family, not that Severus seemed much inclined to play the role of older brother to a chronically ill-behaved, near-feral sister. They had learnt to begrudgingly tolerate each other and had seemed to find a sort of camaraderie in certain shared academic interests. Beyond that, it was odd to hear the girl declare that her 'other brother' was on his way to rescue them.
Even Harry hadn't much hope of that.
He shivered, but not from cold, even though it was frigid below the earth in the dungeons. He keenly felt the absence of his jacket and the lapel pin that Severus had always insisted that he wear to protect himself.
"Wulf's the one that went after Nicky," Harry said then, shaking his head. "Yax is in the other room... and where's the third man?"
"Ze one vit ze silver hair?"
"No," Harry frowned. "Not him. He's upstairs still, I think. There was this short man... Pettigrew—"
"Ah, he is new, I am tinking," Erich replied. "Zis is ze firzt time I am seeing him."
"Where did he go?"
The same curly haired boy from earlier shuffled forward toward the bars of his cage. "He helped the other two wrestle us into this cage after we tried to run, and then said he had business elsewhere while Wulf and Caliban were putting Erich up in the birdcage."
"Where did he go?" Harry pressed him, licking his lips as he felt his breath hitch. For all they knew, the third man could be in that room with them as they spoke, listening in on all they said.
"'Ee popped out, didn' 'ee? Same as 'ee popped in—"
Accordingly, when a sharp noise broke the air, a few of the children shrieked.
"Speak o' th' devil 'n 'ee'll appear—!" the unidentifiable boy yelled.
But instead of the figure of a short, balding man, the thing that appeared in the centre of the hall was the approximate size and shape of a severely malnourished child... if that child had wildly oversized ears that stuck out to either side of its head and glowing, reflective eyes the size of tennis balls.
The closer the creature shuffled forward, the more Harry saw Ms. Tibbons scurrying backwards in her cage, making small, piteous whimpering noises.
"W-what is that thing?" She squeaked. Harry imagined that the woman was so scared she might have even considered hiding behind Snowdrop—who seemed more curious and irritated than scared—had such an option not been so cowardly as to have been nearly unforgivable.
Strangely, after having caught sight of the being, the other children had fallen silent, and a few had even heaved sighs of relief.
"Meeksi!" A few of them cried, rushing to the bars and either holding their hands out or waving.
"Is it time for supper, Meeky?" One very small child asked, sounding hopeful.
"The skinny one—who is not Master—is saying that I is to be bringing breads and pasties, and you is to be washing your faces for tonight, babies."
It was impossible to say what on earth the strange being was, male or female, for its voice was such a high pitch that Harry assumed that must have been normal for one of its number.
At the announcement that the children ought to wash their faces, they all grew silent, and any excitement they'd earlier displayed faded into tense silence.
"For tonight, Meeksi? You're sure?"
Meeksi shifted weight from one leg to the other and wrung its hands.
"I do not understand vhy you treat zis ting like she iz our friend," Erich interrupted, sounding disgusted. "She just does vhatever ze silver-haired man commands. She iz as bad as zem—"
Grumbling came from the children below him. Apparently they were used to this line being taken by the foreign boy.
"Meeksi brings us food, and cleans the pots, and she tells us stories—"
"Meekzi," he put special emphasis on the name to illustrate his disgust with her, "alzo is ze one zat brings zoes cakes I am made to eat, ja? Ze ones that after I eat, I wake up with someting else mizzing. Do not be little fools—"
From where she stood in the midst of the cages, the creature moaned, her spindly fingers pulling at her ears until she could have tied them under her doll-sized face. "Ooooooh," she droned again, the sound of it awful and forlorn. "Please do not be being cross with me, little babies... Meeksi cannot help but to be doing what she is told..."
"Meekzi iz a bad elf, and she should go eat poizon before she tinks to say she cares for us again!"
"Oooh, Master Erich, noooo," Meeksi sobbed, great pearlescent tears coursing down her cheeks and catching the scant light. In her distress her pupils had nearly doubled in size and she looked rather like a water-logged shihtzu. "Meeksi would be doing this, yes? You know Meeksi would!"
"Mazter Erich?! Pah! I know you say you are sorry and zen do vhatever it iz zat your real mazter says zat you muzt do—"
"She can't help it! If you were kinder to her—!"
"She vould vhat, hmmm? She vould feed zem ze sleeping cakes instead? She vould let me out of my cage? Let us all out, maybe? Go ahead zen, Meekzi, let us all out of here!"
"MASTER ERICH!" Meeksi cried, anguish in every syllable, "Master Erebus would be having us all killed! Every last elf, Master Erich! All seven of Meeksi's elflings..."
"You see? She does not care about us at all," Erich declared for the benefit of the spectators to his dispute, as might have a court-room barrister arguing his case.
"I don't care if she cares about us," one small boy whinged, "I'm hungry, and I wanna eat one of Meeksi's pasties!"
"Shut your lipless gob, Erich, and worry about your stupid cakes and the fact you won't be seein' much'a nothin' in a few weeks," another added to the mutiny.
The older girl—seemingly the leader of the female captives, and the eldest of them—gasped. "Don't say th—!"
"You can shut it too, Dorothy. No one said you were our new mum!"
Dorothy sniffed and shifted the weight of the girl in her arms, nuzzling her cheek against the young girl's head as though she were a comforting stuffed toy. Even so, she didn't speak up in defense of Erich again.
From this dispute Harry, Ms. Tibbons, and Snowdrop had retreated entirely. Harry supposed that he'd not been there long enough to take a side—although, on a provisional basis, he thought that Erich's mistrust of the elf sounded well-founded—and he considered that it might have been the case that Ms. Tibbons and Snowdrop felt similarly ill-at-ease in picking a side.
And he was hungry...
A voice that sounded terribly like Severus' echoed in his thoughts.
'How much easier for them to sell you if they've managed to lull you to sleep.'
He gulped and hissed a wordless "Psssst!" to Snowdrop, who was sitting near enough to him that she glanced his way warily.
"I don't think we should eat anything," he murmured to her, trusting her to pass the message along to Ms. Tibbons. "Not tonight, anyway..."
The girl, usually so difficult, stared at him for what felt like an age as the others still argued with the pleading elf—if that's actually what she was—in the background. Then, she nodded.
"I don't wanna go to sleep."
Breathing a sigh of relief, Harry nodded back. "Right. Tell Ms. Tibbons."
He watched as Snowdrop tugged on the woman's ripped blouse and got their teacher to bend over enough that the girl could whisper in her ear.
"New boy! Vhat are you saying, hm?" Erich called out to him, sounding suspicious from his literal perch. "I can see you vhizpering! Vhat secrets are you keeping?"
Harry felt himself flush with irritation, as—if anything—he'd been on the boy's side in the dispute. "No secrets—"
"I do not believe you! You come in and you already know vhat a vand iz, and vhat spells are! You know all about vards, and you knew Vulf's and Yax's names! You have been sent here to spy on us!"
"I have not!" Harry argued back. He surged toward the bars and craned his head so that he could attempt to stare directly into Erich's electric-blue eyes.
He was a startling sight. Like a prop made for a house of horrors. And his eyes were a terrifying colour, reminiscent of an advanced case of cataracts.
"They knew who you were, Potter," Snowdrop chimed in, suspicion edging into her tone. "They knew your name and everything... and you told us to run. Like you knew what they were about as soon as you saw—"
"I can't... I can't explain it all now, alright?"
"If you're with them—!"
"Did it seem like I was with them? Hmmm?" Harry demanded snidely, speaking to her as though she were quite dim. "Did it seem like I wanted to be here? Or did that Prince bloke not say he wanted to sell me too? He said to the highest bidder! You must be some sort of great idiot if—"
"You will both stop insulting each other this instant!" Ms. Tibbons interjected, her voice going, if possible, more shrill than they were accustomed to hearing. Every one of them fell silent, including the other children and Meeksi who was, by now, watching the drama with her wide, glowing eyes.
"I have no doubt that Harry has just as little desire to be here as you or I, Snowdrop. Whatever Harry knows... I have no doubt he knows because your own brother knows."
"What do you mean?! Nicky doesn't know a mule's hind quarters from the fore!"
"Not Nicky, Miss Hill. Severus." Ms. Tibbons admitted, sounding rather faint. "Erich mentioned the Potions Masters. Harry mentioned cauldrons in the other room. I have spent enough time in Severus Snape's kitchen to have seen that man's collection of... of crockery, and also to have read the word 'potions' in books he's left out when he's been careless..."
She sounded sick to her stomach, and Harry felt ill thinking that she may well come away from all of this—if indeed there was any chance that any of them made it out—with a terribly flawed impression of her boyfriend.
"Severus isn't like them!" He defended the absent wizard, passion in every word. "He isn't! And I'm not!"
He looked to Erich and glowered up into the boy's freakish eyes, defying him to say a word against him for what he was about to admit.
"I'm a wizard. I was born with magic, okay? Wizards aren't things you can become because you do bad things like what these blokes do. Not just anyone can say some mumbo jumbo and throw beetle eyes and rat bile into a pot and be doing witchcraft. You have to have magic.
"I don't know many wizards except for Severus," he admitted, "but I know that there's good wizards and bad wizards. We have prisons," he said, looking to Ms. Tibbons, who was watching him, wide-eyed. "Your brother is in prison, Ms. Tibbons. There's bad people out there, and you know it..." he appealed.
Slowly, her frizzy head bobbed in acknowledgement of this fact. With an uneasy look to the other children in the room, she made a slightly apologetic grimace. "Plenty of... plenty of people in history have done what they're doing here... probably without using it for magic, of course... but I can't suppose you're wrong, Harry. Evil is always lurking about. Always..."
"Yeah," he breathed a sigh of relief. "Most of us—most of us with magic, I mean—I think we just are normal. Severus would never, never, do what... what this Prince is doing... but he knows about stuff like this. Before I started at Rowky Syke, Yax and Wulf almost got me, and they were talking about all of the things they would do with me and what they assumed Severus must have been using me for. None of it was true. But he had to explain after that there are dark wizards who use magic to do bad things.
"That's how I know who Yax and Wulf are. That's why I know what cauldrons and wands and spells are. When I get older, I have to go to a special school," he admitted.
"Sevvy and Lily Evans," Ms. Tibbons gasped in realisation. "They both left before their last year at Rowky..."
Given the trauma of present circumstances, Harry didn't bother correcting the woman on her boyfriend's name and how he positively hated being called 'Sevvy.'
"We go to the magic school," Harry informed her. "All witches and wizards have to start there at eleven."
"My brother's not a... a..." Snowdrop struggled for words, but then her eyes widened. "Wait... does that mean I'm a wizard too?"
Under different circumstances, Harry might have delighted in telling the girl that no, she was nothing special. But here, now? He mournfully shook his head at her.
"Toby's not magical. It was Severus' mum who was the witch, not his dad. He said sometimes witches—that's girl wizards. You wouldn't be called a wizard anyway—and wizards are born to non-magical parents. My mum was. But then he said there was almost no chance that you were, and that usually if that's the case you would have started doing accidental magic by now. Have you?"
"I dunno," she glared at him. "What's accidental magic like?"
"For me it was that I'd sometimes end up on the roof of my old school if my cousin was chasing me 'round the yard, or my hair would grow back overnight if my aunt cut it and only left the fringe. Strange stuff."
She visibly deflated. "Oh."
"Zat is vhy zey uzed ze vards on your cage," Erich observed. "So you could not ezcape." He tapped a finger to what would have been his lips had they not been mercilessly cut away. Instead, it appeared that he was tapping his lower gum.
"They knew who you were, Harry," Ms. Tibbons reminded him. "Would they have known about just any magical child or was it because they almost captured you last year, as you said?"
Meeksi perked up. "He is being Harry Potter, Miss Muggle. Harry Potter is being very very famous to witches and wizards."
Snowdrop openly gawped at the elf, her mouth hanging open in an approximation of a hooked trout.
"Before they is working for my master, Misters Yaxley and Mucliber were working for a very bad wizard, who my master and my real master and mistress hated very much. He comes and asks for Big Master's money, and then when Big Master is saying 'no', he would be a very sneaky one, and go to the Little Master—"
"Vhat are you blatering about, Meekzi? Zere are no oter mazters here—"
"There is, Master Erich! Master Erebus is only being obeyed first when Big Master and Mistress are not being at home. For two years, they is on holiday and is not setting foot in Aethlingworth. If they were, they would be being very very cross with Little Master..."
"Cross!" Erich snorted. "I am sure zat zey vould vag zeir fingers at him, ja? And zen let him go on—"
"No, no, no!" Meeksi objected, looking scandalised on her absent master's behalf. "If they is knowing of what is happening, Big Master would be having Master Erebus taken by the aurors! And Mistress' heart would be being broken..."
"So vhy do you not tell zem yourself, you little vurm? If you care as much as you say?"
"Meeksi cannot contact the Master and the Mistress, Master Erich, please..." Meeksi grabbed her ears again and tugged at them ineffectually, holding the tips beneath her chin in her long-fingered grasp. "Their other houses are having their own populations of elves. Aethlingworth elves are bound to the land, and the elves from Hiyas ng Prinsipe are bound to their land... we elves is not being able to travel easily, Master Erich... not without losing bits of our power. And we is not able to cross oceans..."
"Ozeans! How far away can zey be, hmm?"
"They is either in south of Spain or Philippines," Meeksi informed them. "The Mistress does not care for the weather in Aethlingworth and they is staying away years at a time sometimes."
"You can claim all you vant zat zere iz nuting you can do, Meekzi, but I know better! I know zat you have not even tried—"
"Oooooooh," Meeksi keened in her seemingly habitual fashion. "What is you wanting Meeksi to do, Master Erich? If Master Erebus has not directly forbidden Meeksi from it, Meeksi would do it for you! I is not being allowed to let you out..."
Erich's cage rocked as he swung his leg back and forth, his terrible face seemingly deep in thought. Harry imagined he might have been frowning, but it was difficult to say, as even his eyebrows were mangled beyond the ability for his facial muscles to respond appropriately to whatever expression he was truly making.
"You vill bring me a vand, Meekzi. Zey must have a spare somevere, ja?"
Meeksi attempted to stifle a shriek with her hands, her eyes darting to the door behind which Yax had disappeared. After a tense moment of focusing her eyes on the door, she finally relaxed.
"He is not in there anymore, he is having left..." she whispered to herself. Then, she turned back to Erich with fire in her eyes. "You is not a wizard, Master Erich. What would you do with a wand, hmm?"
The boy in the birdcage looked to Harry, and for a moment, his electric-blue eyes met Harry's own peridot-green gaze.
"It doezn't matter, does it, Meekzi? As you say: I am not a vizard. And so long as I do not tell you, you may do as I azk."
The elf dithered over this, her eyes darting this way and that as she seemed to calculate the approximate harm that could come of obeying Erich's wishes.
"Master Erebus is not saying that I cannot be giving Master Erich a wand, this is true... but for an elf to take a wizard's wand... this is very bad, Master Erich! You must understand—"
"If you do as I say, soon your master and mistress vill come back, and zey vill not be 'cross' vit you if zey is truly hating what zeir brute son Erebus iz doing. Iz zis true?"
"Oh I wish Master and Mistress would come back," Meeksi whinged, visible tears sparkling at the creases of her luminous eyes.
"Zen bring to me ze vand, Meekzi."