Chapter Text
cover art by floralbearies
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Part One
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Snape POV
Snape didn’t care which side he ended up on. He didn’t care about anything since Lily died. He hated the Dark Lord for killing her, but he also hated Dumbledore for taking advantage of his grief and turning him into his personal weapon afterwards. He didn’t care anymore, he just wanted it over. All he cared about was being on the winning side. And once he realized that they were up against impossible to find or destroy horcruxes which made the Dark Lord unkillable, Snape made up his mind. They would be going round and around this battle of the Dark Lord finding ways to return and keep Snape in this despicable position under Dumbledore’s heel, having to teach stupid, disgusting children day in and day out forever until finally one of the two powerful wizards outmaneuvered the other. Dumbledore was already dying from trying to break one horcrux, and who knew how long that slow death would take him. No, Snape wouldn’t do it. He was sick of the ruse and he wanted it over. So once he learned what Dumbledore’s deus ex machina was, and saw how impossible it would be to get into the position to use it, he made his choice.
Snape went to Malfoy Manor, no hesitance or regret in his long dead heart as he went to give the Dark Lord the information that would put an end to the war. An act that would also conveniently fulfill the Unbreakable Vow Narcissa had forced him into, freeing himself both from Dumbledore’s control and the vow in one move.
“My Lord,” Snape interrupted after striding into the sitting room. The Dark Lord gave him a sharp look for his interruption. “I must speak with you privately.”
With a look from the Dark Lord, the Malfoys, Bellatrix and the other Death Eaters stood and left the room. Draco lingered a step, casting a questioning look to Snape. Snape flicked his hand in a subtle gesture, telling the boy to go. He’d thank Snape soon enough for ending the war and releasing Draco from his own impossible duty.
“My Lord,” Snape said, kneeling in front of the Dark Lord’s chair. “I’ve discovered Dumbledore’s final plan, his true means of using the Potter boy to destroy you.”
The Dark Lord’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but he waved Snape on.
“He intends for Potter to die at your hand. He knows Potter isn’t powerful enough to defeat you in a duel head-on. He knows of your horcruxes and is working to break them. All of them, but one, Potter.”
“Potter?” the Dark Lord hissed, but after a moment there was a light of understanding in his snake-like eyes. “Ahhh… The scar. The connection. The boy took a piece of me when he killed me.”
“Yes, Dumbledore is certain of this, and once all the horcruxes are gone but Potter, he’ll send him to you to die. If you kill him, you’ll destroy your last horcrux and kill yourself.”
“Neither can live while the other survives,” the Dark Lord recited the prophecy.
Snape nodded. “Exactly so. To kill you, he must kill the boy too. He raised Potter like a lamb for the slaughter.”
“Harry Potter the Lamb,” the Dark Lord mused thoughtfully. “Perhaps we can turn the old fool’s lamb into a wolf?”
The idea had Snape’s mouth tipping up into a small smile. It was hard not to feel joy knowing that soon the war would be over, and soon, finally, that bastard Potter would get what he deserved. If Snape couldn’t make the father pay, he could still relish in his son’s suffering.
“Bring me the werewolf. When we’re done with Potter, the Order will have to put him down themselves, and once they do, the prophecy will be null. Dumbledore’s chess pieces will all fall apart without their Boy Who Lived. Perhaps the boy will eat them up himself.”
A rare smile split the Dark Lord’s pale face as he saw the shape of his victory.
Harry POV
It was a trap. He should have known better. He should have listened to Dumbledore about his connection to Voldemort. He should have tried harder in his Occlumency lessons to keep the visions out, but he hadn’t. He’d been too stubborn, too angry, too certain that he could use the visions against Voldemort to gain important knowledge that the Order could use.
Now it was too late. Now he was being chased through the ministry on a full moon by a werewolf. He didn’t know what had happened to any of his friends, they’d gotten separated in the maze-like Hall of Prophecies. All he could hear were screams and spells in the distance, but he couldn’t stop and try to find his way to them, all he could do was run and look for some escape.
He wasn’t sure where he’d ended up in the Ministry, another room of weird magic and shelves of baubles he didn’t understand. He threw spells behind him to knock shelves over, to pull things into the way, hoping maybe one of them would blow up and stop Greyback, but nothing seemed to work. The panting and clicking of talons on stone got closer and louder, a growl nipping at his heels until he came to the end of the room and there was nothing there, no door to escape through. He tried to turn left and keep running, maybe he could circle around get back to the group, but his foot slipped—
Harry screamed as nails bit through his clothing and tore into his leg. His face slammed into the stone floor as he fell, his glasses breaking and his wand clattering off into the darkness. Long, sharp fangs bit into his side with so much pressure he felt a rib crack, and from there all Harry knew was pain. Pain and screaming and blood. His own blood, spilling out of his body with every attack of teeth and claw, piercing and rending flesh.
And then, with a flash of red, it was over. The heavy, animalistic body tearing him apart was gone, taking its teeth and claws with it. His vision warped with black spots, and what little he could see of the dark, blurry room seemed to drift further and further away.
Black boots clicked on the stone as they strode up to him, the hem of black robes swishing around them.
An irritated click of the tongue, familiar in how much vitriol a single, short sound could make.
“You’re not supposed to die yet, Potter.”
…
What he thought was rescue was only a reprieve. What he thought was pain at the claws of a werewolf was nothing compared to the pain that came from Voldemort’s wand and Snape’s potions.
Even the darkness in between the torture became a torture in and of itself. Harry lost all sense of time and place. There was only darkness, and pain. Potions that burned their way through his body, that had him screaming himself hoarse, contorting his body to such extremes it was a wonder he didn’t break his own back. He wished he would, if only to bring an end to it.
Blood. Blood filled his senses. It was the macabre metronome of his life, drip, drip, dripping on the stone floor beneath the bed he was permanently strapped to with iron shackles. Blood was the only thing to mark the passing of time in the void between. And as time passed, Harry became more aware of the blood. The dripping got louder. The metallic smell of it filled his nose and choked out all other senses, so heavy it laid in his cage.
Voldemort made sure he was always bleeding. He enjoyed it, taking his pound of flesh and delighting in corrupting whatever protective magic had once existed in Harry’s blood, created by his mother’s sacrifice. A sacrifice that spilled out onto the floor day by day.
Snape replaced the blood with some foul potion. And when Harry took to biting at him and spitting the potion back in his face, an IV was set up and the potion was slowly forced into his veins, drip, drip, dripping on one side of him, while on his other side blood trickled down his arm and off his fingers. Drip, drip, drip.
He didn’t know what they were doing to him, Snape ignored his questions and curses alike, and eventually took to gagging him. All Voldemort would say, with a bone-chilling smile, was that he was making a wolf out of a lamb. He didn’t understand why they didn’t kill him. Voldemort had been trying to kill him for years, and now that Harry was laid out like a pig ready for slaughter, he wasn’t taking the killing blow.
Harry thought he was strong, he thought hope could never die, but everyone had their breaking point. Eventually he stopped asking questions. He stopped cursing them out. He took the pain and the torture and the darkness and he let it hollow him out. He didn’t even hope for death anymore, because it turned out that hope could die, after all.
Snape POV
“That should be the last of it,” Snape said, tucking his wand away after finishing the memory charm. “He shouldn’t remember a thing. I let him keep some of the Ministry. It would be too obvious if he was missing that memory, but I replaced Greyback’s attack with a duel with a Death Eater.”
“Good,” the Dark Lord said, standing over Potter’s unconscious form, giving a last, critical look to his creation.
Potter’s prison cell was sick with the smell of waste and vomit and blood. Snape pursed his lips and valiantly ignored it as he did every time he had to visit this vile place. He wished the Dark Lord would excuse him, but he seemed intent on studying Potter, making sure he looked perfect, like a child playing with its doll.
Potter looked fine. He looked exactly as he had before all this had happened three months ago. Snape made sure of it. His potions could erase even the oldest, most obvious scars, and Potter’s body was free of every bite and scratch Greyback had given him. No one would be the wiser, not even Potter.
The Dark Lord tenderly ran a finger down Potter’s cheek.
“He looks so innocent, my wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Potter did not look innocent, he never had. Even unconscious, Snape could still see James in him, the smug bully and troublemaker that Potter had done his best to imitate at every opportunity. But he kept this thought to himself as the Dark Lord gloated over his prize, the new chess piece he was about to put on the board that even Dumbledore would not expect.
“Get Scabior and Gerhart to move him, then feed the Order what they need to know to ‘rescue’ Potter,” the Dark Lord said and moved away from Potter, headed out of the room before he stopped and looked Snape in the eye. Snape could feel the Dark Lord prying into his thoughts as he commanded, “And you tell no one of what we’ve done to Potter.”
“I understand, my Lord,” Snape said with a small bow of his head. He knew he was the only one among them who knew of this secret, the only one who knew they’d taken Potter captive at all. Even Greyback had been put down. He was a loudmouth and a wildcard that would surely gloat about biting Potter, had he been giving the chance to.
This was the Dark Lord’s way to win the war, and the fact that Snape had brought him this prize, had used his potions to twist Potter as he wished, and had kept this secret put him well ahead of anyone else in the Dark Lord’s eyes. When the war was over and they had won, Snape would be his right hand and most trusted ally. A position he felt that he more than deserved after all the years of licking Dumbledore’s boots and putting up with snot-nosed children.
Harry POV
Harry woke to light and, for some reason, that was unsettling. He didn’t understand why. Sunbeams cut through the tall windows of Hogwarts’ Hospital Wing. It was a familiar sight, but it felt wrong.
For a moment Harry wondered if he’d taken another bludger to the head during a Quidditch match, his head hurt bad enough for it to be true, before a rush of memories overwhelmed him. The vision of Sirius being tortured at the Ministry. Harry and his friends riding to the Ministry on Thestrals. Being ambushed in the Department of Mysteries. Getting separated from his friends and dueling a Death Eater alone. Darkness.
He struggled to remember what happened afterwards, but he couldn’t bring anything to mind, and it hurt to think too hard. He must have been knocked out and brought here to recover.
As Harry struggled to sit up, Madame Pomfrey noticed him from across the room and came bustling over, pushing him back onto his back and barraging him with questions that he could scarcely keep up with.
She said he had a concussion, but otherwise seemed fine, and Harry told her he felt okay otherwise. She seemed disturbed by this information and commanded him to stay put while she called the Headmaster, then left him a disgusting potion to drink. Harry plugged his nose and swallowed it in one go.
He shivered as the potion slid down his throat. He expected it to hurt, but it only tingled weirdly under his skin. Harry didn’t have to wait long before a train of visitors poured into the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore first, followed closely by Minerva and, not long after that, Hermione and Ron, and then after them came Arthur and Molly.
Harry didn’t understand what the big deal was until they explained that he’d been missing for three months. Three months. Harry couldn’t process it. He had no way to put it into perspective. It was almost September and his 6th year term would start soon. He’d missed nearly the whole summer break.
Dumbledore pressed him for information, but Harry had no memory of the three months. The last thing he remembered was dueling a Death Eater in the Ministry. But apparently he’d been snatched from the battle. The Order had only just found him being transported by two Snatchers yesterday.
No one could explain why he wasn’t dead, why he hadn’t been given to Voldemort right away. Dumbledore looked troubled the more Harry denied remembering things, and he posed that it might be worthwhile to get a professional of memory charms to have a look at him. Molly objected on the basis that he needed time to heal and feel better first. Harry felt lost in the conversation. To him, it seemed he’d been doing his O.W.L.s just the other day, not kidnapped and lost for months.
“My wand?” Harry managed to ask, when he was given a chance to get a word in.
He sighed in relief when Hermione pulled it from her bag, along with his glasses, and handed them to him. “We found them in the Ministry, but you were gone,” she explained, a worried look on her face.
Harry was glad to have his wand in hand, but he frowned at his glasses. He hadn’t even thought about them since waking, he’d assumed they were on his face because he could see everyone clearly, but now that he thought about it… He put the glasses on and everyone turned blurry. He took them back off. “I…I don’t think I need these anymore,” he said hesitantly and folded them up.
“No?” Dumbledore asked, tipping his head and staring at Harry with interest. “Curious…”
It wasn’t long before Madam Pomfrey came around and shooed everyone away, telling them that her patient needed rest. Harry was glad for it. He’d never liked being the center of attention, and knowing how badly his rescue at the Ministry had gone made him want to curl into a ball and hide from the world. Before she left, Hermione told him with sad eyes what had happened to Sirius, and Harry’s heart sunk into his stomach. He didn’t want to believe it, but there was no reason she would lie to him.
“Get some rest,” Pomfrey ordered and closed the curtains around Harry’s bed.
But Harry wasn’t tired, he was angry. The more he thought about Sirius dying at the Ministry, the angrier he got. The more he thought about how he’d been missing for months and no one knew where or what had happened to him, the more violated he felt. His muscles bunched as he tensed, filled with anger and helplessness at his situation, wishing for some way to release it. He clutched a spare pillow and squeezed it. And when that didn’t feel like enough of a release for his anger, Harry ripped it to shreds, cloth and feathers flying all over his bed as he took his anger out on it. It made him feel marginally better to destroy something.