Gilderoy Lockhart and the Holy Grail

Gilderoy awoke to the sound of voices just as someone placed him on a soft surface that gave a bit underneath his weight. He did not immediately recognize this surface as a bed with a soft mattress that was covered with layers of blankets and other linens nor did he recognize the pillow slipped beneath his head. For several confusing moments all of it was completely foreign to him.

He opened his eyes only to close them again immediately against the brightness of the light in the room. The assault upon his eyes, so accustomed to darkness had he become, was nearly as painful as some of his wounds. He moaned in protest, and to his surprise, the room became just a bit darker, as though someone had closed the shutters or doused one of the lights or something.

“He needs a wash,” said the voice he recognized as belonging to Potter, one of the two wizards who had come for him and taken him from his dungeon cell.

“He needs much more than that,” murmured Snape as something soft and warm was draped over his lap. “Bring me two vials of Wound Cleansing Potion and another towel,” he ordered more brusquely.

Gilderoy cautiously opened his eyes and found that Snape was leaning over him. Long fingers wrapped around one of his wrists for a moment. He watched Snape’s lips move silently as though counting. He knew that all of this meant something, but he couldn’t think of what.

“Can you tell me where it hurts?” Snape asked him, looking down into his open eyes. The fingers at his wrist slipped down and over his hand, holding it in a careful, almost furtive grasp for a moment.

Gilderoy moistened his lips and in a voice hoarse from screaming and parched from lack of water, he told him simply, “Everywhere.”

Snape’s eyes darted away for a brief moment. He did not seem surprised, only saddened, and perhaps somehow angered, by that admission.

“Your ... injuries ... I am going to treat them. The pain will go away. Soon,” he said slowly and awkwardly. The words, the sense of comfort, he was trying to convey did not come naturally to him. “If you would prefer, I can put you to sleep again. That might make it less painful for you,” Snape offered with a certain reluctance.

“I’m afraid...” said Gilderoy softly, shivering as much from the pain as from the sound of footsteps echoing from a hallway.

“Potter, stop dawdling,” said Snape, raising his head to look toward the door.

Gilderoy turned his head in time to see a dark-haired young wizard with two bottles of potions and a towel draped over one shoulder enter the room, which he noticed for the first time was a rather large and shadowy bedroom in what seemed like a very old house; the young wizard was, of course, the same one who had removed the knife.

“I’m not dawdling,” he muttered, handing the bottles to Snape across the bed, but keeping the towel where it was.

He sat down on the bed, jostling Gilderoy, and gazed down at him with an inscrutable expression, caught half-way between pity and disbelief. Something about his green eyes made Gilderoy uncomfortable, even though he couldn’t put his finger on what. A certain familiarity, he thought, but something more than that as well: a sort of depth.

“After I apply the cleansing potion, wipe away the excess potion and any blood or grime too,” Snape instructed, no doubt speaking to Potter. Gilderoy turned his head and watched Snape take the stopper from one of the large vials. He caught a peculiar whiff of what smell like jasmine and fresh milk. “This may sting a bit, but it will prevent serious infection ... and reduce scarring,” he explained.

Gilderoy was surprised. He hardly felt the potion as Snape poured it over a half-healed cut -- one of hers -- on his right forearm. Potter leaned over him and blotted dutifully with the towel. To his surprise, the cut appeared to be much better now, although still in the process of healing. The wound was no longer festering and ugly, but clean.

“Like magic,” he murmured.

“That’s right,” said Potter, trying to smile, but all-too-obviously finding himself unable to manage the feat.

He watched with some fascination as Snape poured more on the potion on his chaffed and battered wrist. The manacles had not been kind to him either. He didn’t really feel that either, not even when Harry blotted the potion and blood away and a bit of skin came away with it.

“Gently,” growled Snape in a quiet, warning tone as he applied the potion a second time.

“Are his fingers broken?” asked Potter as Snape paused and examined the digits.

For some reason, Gilderoy found that he had a difficult time of it trying to uncurl his fingers for Snape.

“Poor circulation, perhaps. Nothing more. If necessary, there’s a balm I can prepare for him,” answered Snape with a thoughtful frown, yet seeming relieved at the same time, as though he had expected much worse than that. “Check his other hand. See if it’s the same.”

After a brief examination, Potter answered in the affirmative, squeezed his hand, and released it.

“I will attend to his hands and feet later then,” said Snape quietly.

Gilderoy watched curiously as they applied their potion to the weals that criss-crossed his stomach, gained from a vicious lashing with a whip in the early attempts to extract information from him. Nothing. No feeling at all. Just a sense of pressure beyond the background roar of pain as Potter wiped the potion away once it had done its job.

Snape ran his fingers over his protruding ribs, checking, he imagined, for the broken ones. He flinched only slightly when Snape located one of them.

“Easily mended,” he commented, drawing his wand from his sleeve.

After a quick incantation, Gilderoy found that he could breathe more deeply and with less pain. He managed a tremulous smile at this and was rewarded with a not unkindly smirk from Snape.

“Lost a lot of weight, hasn’t he?” Potter remarked, touching his newly healed ribs curiously.

When he had first been stripped, and beaten, before being tossed into what would become his cell, his captors had called him meaty and made sport of his podgy stomach and his ample thighs and buttocks. All of that was gone now, Gilderoy realized, lifting his head slightly and looking at his thin, scarred body.

“Yes, but that will be easily remedied enough. Mrs Weasley will be returning to cook for the Order on Saturday,” said Snape.

His long fingers moved to examine Gilderoy’s nipples, extracting a soft cry of pain from his patient, who squirmed and squeezed his eyes closed as he threw his head back against the pillow.

“Nearly severed,” said the professor in a soft tone that masked his anger.

That, like so much else, was her doing. Slicing, jabbing, prodding, nicking... anything that could make him scream, beg, and bleed. Just mutilated lumps of flesh now. Just something else to give him pain. And her amusement.

“A Healing Potion?” questioned Potter, placing a hand on Gilderoy’s shoulder to help keep him still.

“It would require hours... nearly a day to brew something to remedy this properly. I will do what I can for him now and brew stronger draughts later for this and for his worse injuries,” decided Snape, removing his hands for a moment. “Potter, you will need to restrain him while I apply this remedy, such that it is,” he instructed.

Restrain? Gilderoy choked back a fearful sob at this. He had been restrained so many times before. The manacles ... his hands and feet ... the agony of he cold biting metal, the helplessness and vulnerability. A sob of frightened desperation exploded forth from his chest. They weren’t. They wouldn’t. Would they?

“Please, don’t,” he begged them. “I’ll be good. I’ll do anything you want. I promise. I’ll be good. I’ll be good.”

Snape muttered an invective under his breath before saying, “We aren’t going to harm you. You must trust us, Gilderoy.”

The use of his first name calmed him somewhat, took away some of the panic, because it was something his torturers never used, but he was still afraid.

“Here. Let me show you what we’re going to do,” said Potter in a sympathetic, mollifying tone. “If you don’t like it, then we’ll try another way,” he added.

Gilderoy was surprised when they pulled him into a seated position and Potter slipped behind him, sliding his legs underneath his arms as he was reclined again, now with Potter’s chest to lean against instead of the pillow. While sitting up had made him dizzy, he could not complain. Instead of restrained, he felt secure.

“Adequate,” said Snape with a nod.

“All right?” asked Potter, very hastily pulling the towel in his lap back into place, but leaving his hand on his stomach.

“Yes,” Gilderoy whispered as his eyes prickled anew with tears. More so than before, he truly felt safe now and as though perhaps he were among friends.

“This will hurt, but it must be done,” Snape informed him.

Gilderoy watched as he changed the stopper of the bottle into a small glass dropper with his wand. He filled the dropper with the Wound Cleansing potion and looked at Potter.

“Just hold him still as best you can,” said Snape.

Potter tightened his grip and leaned down to say something to him: “You can scream if it will make you feel any better. Sometimes it helps.”

And he did cry out as Snape applied the potion and blotted away the blood himself. He thrashed too as the stinging refused to stop, but Potter kept a good, firm grip on him and rocked him back and forth as the pain-driven spasms ceased and Snape finished his work. His ears were still ringing from the acuteness of the pain when Potter began rubbing his stomach in an attempt to calm and soothe him.

“Thank you,” he managed feebly, burying his face in the crook of Potter’s arm.

“I think it would be best if you continued to restrain him while I take care of the rest of his injuries,” said Snape tentatively.

“All right,” Potter agreed.

Gilderoy could hardly feel it as Snape applied the potion to the wounds that had been inflicted upon his feet, ankles, and calves, slowly working his way upward, but he was aware of the pain diminishing, leaving his body as though it had never been there in the first place. The only thing that remained was a tiredness and heaviness in his limbs. He sighed softly at this sensation, somewhat akin to contentment, and unconsciously nestled closer to Potter.

“What about the bruises?” questioned the young wizard who was holding him.

“There is a half-empty jar of salve in my bath. I intend to use that on the darker bruises and leave the rest be. They will heal on their own in time. It is unwise to use too many potions at once or too much of them on someone in his delicate condition,” Snape informed him as he bent one of Gilderoy’s knees to treat the back of his calf and thigh.

“Didn’t realize you knew so much about healing,” remarked Potter off-handedly.

“Why should you have?” replied Snape with a slight shrug before he turned to the other leg and applied the same treatment. He lifted the towel slightly and said, “Your testicles appear to have suffered repeated compression injury.”

Gilderoy swallowed hard at the renewed onslaught of pain as Snape eased his penis aside to cup his balls in one hand. Harry made a soft hushing sound as he squirmed, fearful of the intimate touch and remembering touches that had been cruel. Not touches. Grabbing, squeezing, rough twisting that made him physically ill and had hurt him terribly. Once, early on, she had ground them under the heel of her boot. He had thought the pain would never end.

“A standard Healing Potion should take the swelling down. More than that, I cannot say,” said Snape in a neutral tone, though his face had turned slightly paler. “Now for the most difficult part,” he murmured softly.

Gilderoy lifted his head as the towel was removed from his lap. His eyes met those of Snape. He knew without having to told that the next bit was going to hurt him, and he was afraid, but not as much as he might have been if these two wizards, these strangers, had been less kind to him.

“If you want to be put under a sleeping spell...” Snape began to offer.

“I’ll manage, really, just ... just I know it’s not much to look at now, but please, I don’t want to lose it,” said Gilderoy with an audible quaver in his voice.

She had taken great delight in this particular sort of torture. In its intimacy, in the extremity of pain that could be induced with just a few flicks of a blade or with a heated piece of metal or even with her own sharp teeth, and perhaps most of all, in the sheer horror that could be evoked. Now, after everything that she had done, between his thighs, in place of what had been a man’s sexual organ, there was what resembled a ground up hunk of mutilated meat that oozed pus and sometimes a bit of blood. As Snape cautiously touched him, attempting to exam him without doing further harm, Gilderoy felt no sensation other than pain. He gagged quietly.

“I’ll save what I can,” promised Snape, looking him in the eye again.

Potter couldn’t say anything, but the hand splayed on Gilderoy’s stomach moved upward slightly. He felt Potter rest his forehead against the top of his head, shielding his eyes from the sight. Gilderoy could not blame him in the least.

“I’ll never be able to have sex again, will I?” he questioned.

“I don’t know,” answered Snape, though Gilderoy could see in his dark eyes that this answer, for all its short-comings, was an honest one. “There is much that can be done, that can be attempted; however, I cannot say now exactly how much damage has been done nor how much of it may be irreversible.”

“I understand.”

“I must first clean your wounds, treat any infection, stanch the bleeding... before anything more complicated can be attempted,” said Snape in very patient tones.

“Of course,” Gilderoy agreed quietly, even though he didn’t know very much about any of that.

“Hold him still while I apply the potion,” Snape ordered.

Potter lifted his head and tightened his grip further, but still didn’t say anything to either of them.

For an instant it seemed as though the pain had blinded him. Everything seemed to go dark around him, and all he could hear was his own shrill screams of agony and panic as the potion burned and stung his skin. He wasn’t even aware that he was convulsing for several long minutes. In his panic, he bit his tongue and could taste the blood as he tried to regain control of his body. Something damp and hot spilled over his inner thighs.

“Let me die! Oh, Merlin, just let me die!” Gilderoy shrieked, arching backward as though trying to get away from the acute pain.

“Lockhart ... try to breathe,” coaxed Potter into his ear as he struggled to hold him still. “Try to breathe. You’re going to be all right.” An arm wrapped around his upper chest and pulled him back, closer to Potter, even as the pain continued to ripple through him.

“Scourgify!”

The dampness between his legs went away, but an unpleasant odor lingered. As his vision cleared, Gilderoy realized, to his mortification, that he had urinated on the bed and on himself. He murmured his apologies as his body continued to shudder and spasm involuntarily from the slowly dissipating pain.

“To be expected,” said Snape before casting a charm to refresh the air. “At least you’re still able,” he added, sounding weary and drained. They were all quiet for several long moments while Gilderoy caught his breath. Then Snape spoke again. “Potter, can you turn him onto his stomach and still keep a firm grip on him?” he asked the younger wizard.

“Maybe if we could have him sit up and turn him around?”

“Gilderoy, do you think you could sit up for a few minutes?” inquired Snape carefully.

“Maybe...” he answered uncertainly, remembering how it had made his head swim earlier.

A great deal of pulling and tugging was required, but after some minutes of effort, Gilderoy found himself kneeling on the bed with his head against Potter’s shoulder while the other wizard held him tightly, preventing him from fidgeting while his wounds were tended.

Meanwhile, Snape was busy taking care of the lashes across his back. They hardly stung anymore, but the potion made them twinge slightly. He was half-surprised that he could even feel it now. After those were done, Snape very carefully treated the deeper marks that scoured his buttocks. Those had come from a blade, not a whip. Her blade. Gilderoy shivered as he remembered her scouring his skin before inserting the thin knife.

“Are you cold?” questioned Potter, feeling the shiver more acutely than Snape.

“No ... I was just remembering,” Gilderoy answered.

“Would a warm bath be unwelcome?” asked Snape as he finished his task.

“No, not at all,” said Gilderoy quickly, wanting so much to be clean again. It was more than he had dared to hope for.

“Potter, see to it while I locate the rest of the potions he will need and begin preparing my laboratory for some significant amount of brewing,” said Snape as he left the bed, wiping his hands on his robes as he did so.

“What? Alone?” questioned Potter.

“Surely you can manage to fill a basin with warm water and put him into it, seeing to it, of course, that he does not drown.”

“I suppose I can,” said Potter with a certain annoyed undercurrent to his voice as he released Gilderoy and guided him into a prone position. He carefully replaced the towel and then wrapped one of the bed’s many blankets around him. Gilderoy glimpsed Snape exiting the bedroom.

“You don’t have to, if it’s too much trouble...” said Gilderoy.

Potter frowned and sat down again. “You’re worried about that after everything that’s happened?”

“I don’t want to make you angry.”

Potter looked away, clenching his jaw for a moment, before telling him, “We aren’t like those devils that hurt you. Even if you made us angry, we would never... Sev... Snape and I wouldn’t lay a finger on you.”

“Why not?”

Instead of answering immediately, Potter simply shook his head at this and tried to find the words that would make Gilderoy understand.

“The things they’ve done to you ... torturing people ... I think it must feel good to them. They must enjoy it. But not us. We don’t enjoy that sort of thing, nor even the idea of it, not at all, Lockhart. Something inside of us tells us that’s wrong and horrible to do the things that’ve been done to you to another human being,” Potter explained to him as best he knew how.

“Oh, I see...” said Gilderoy, though he really didn’t.

“Let me draw that bath now.”

---