A Year Like None Other

Note to Readers: This chapter in many senses is not a pleasant read. I don't personally find it gory, as the descriptions focus more on Harry's thoughts and feelings than on visual descriptions of precisely what is done to him. However, my definition of gore and yours may differ. There is no doubt that the chapter is highly dark, tense, and contains strong elements of violence. If this will unduly disturb you, turn back now.
Aspen

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, or this fictional universe. JK Rowling, some publishers, and some film companies own everything. I'm not making anything from this except a hobby.

Summary: A letter from home sends Harry down a path he'd never have walked on his own. A sixth year fic, this story follows Order of the Phoenix and disregards any canon events that occur after Book 5. Spoilers for the first five books. Have fun!

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A Year Like None Other

by Aspen in the Sunlight

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Samhain

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Harry lost his concentration as he was forcibly Disapparated, though he didn't realise as much until a new world came into focus around him. A dark forest clearing, the one from his dreams, but it wasn't true now that somebody was coming.

Something had arrived.

Voldemort.

And with him, a horde of Death Eaters, all of them wearing those hideous masks as they stared at the spectacle before them. It certainly was a spectacle; even Harry could recognise that much. He'd fallen to his hands and knees immediately upon appearing in the clearing, and was in the throes of vile convulsions, his body violently objecting not just to Apparating, but also to the lack of any food or drink in his belly. His stomach wanted to reject something, and when it couldn't, it twisted itself in tight knots instead, and tried to propel itself surging up his throat. Or so it seemed to Harry.

He began Occluding the moment he saw Voldemort's fierce red eyes fixed on him, but by then, it was too late.

Laughter rang out in the clearing. Horrid, evil laughter made all the more sinister by the fact that as soon as Voldemort began it, his Death Eaters echoed the sound en masse. A symphony of laughter as Harry crouched, retching. He thought it was his condition Voldemort found so amusing. Yeah, nothing like a bare-chested sixteen-year-old boy tossing up his socks to get your jollies going, he mentally commented, placing that thought above the fire, where any Legilimens could see it. But he'd misunderstood Voldemort's laughter.

The Death Eaters stood motionless, a slight breeze ruffling the hems of their robes while their leader stepped down from the raised platform where he'd stood. Two scaly hands reached out to grasp Harry firmly by the shoulders, the contact on his bare skin horrible, just horrible. Voldemort pulled him upright until he was kneeling, naked from the waist up, then leaned down to peer directly into Harry's eyes.

Fire. Fire. Firefirefirefirefire---

But damn it, damn it! Voldemort's powers were strong.

"You're thinking of your home destroyed," the Dark Lord softly whispered, moving to speak against his ear, though a rustling of Death Eaters told Harry that they could all detect the quiet voice. "You don't care much about that, though." Voldemort laughed softly. "I told Lucius you wouldn't, though it was a fitting end for a houseful of Muggles who thought to use me instead of the other way around. Ah, and you think so too, I see. We're alike, Harry, more so than you know. I told you that; do you remember? You should have listened."

All that passed through Harry's consciousness like candy floss across his tongue, dissolving before he'd had the barest taste, though it grated to hear Voldemort use his name. What mattered was to protect his mind, protect his secrets, to let the evil wizard think he knew Harry to the core, when he didn't know anything at all. Or, not anything that mattered.

But that wasn't true, as Harry found out in the next instant. Voldemort did know something that mattered.

"Pity you've lost your magic," he purred, his hands reaching out to cup Harry's face, his rough fingers caressing his temples, stroking his cheeks. "Of course it's in there somewhere... you know it, so I know it, but you can't find it, can you? My dear Lucius didn't need to take your wand, after all. You're like a child among us, wand or no. No defences, none at all."

Someone in the circle of Death Eaters jerked. Flinched, it seemed to Harry, though his vision was starting to waver. Voldemort was staring deeply into his eyes again, which meant that Harry had seen the slight motion with his peripheral vision, if he'd seen it at all. Lucius Malfoy--or the one he thought was Lucius; it was difficult to be sure now that the man had joined the circle--moved slightly, too. A sharp motion of his hand, palm facing the ground, as though forbidding something.

Harry tried hard not to wonder who it was that had flinched, just as he applied every scrap of mental discipline he'd ever had to not contemplating which one of those masks hid the one he wouldn't think of. Not here, not now.

Discipline, fire, maintain your focus. You can do it, Harry.

Finally recovering from Apparating, Harry found the strength to knock Voldemort's hands away from his face, and then, the strength to stand, though day past day without any water meant the ground beneath his feet felt strangely unstable. Voldemort rose with him, to tower over him, and kept gazing into his eyes.

He felt it again then, even stronger than before, the pulsing sensation of seeking, searching, a mind inside his own, trying to find his defences, trying to broach them, trying to rape his thoughts. Harry pushed back as he'd practiced, just enough for Voldemort to perceive the fight, just enough for him to think that Harry was resisting... giving him what he expected, protecting his mind from an even greater assault... then a semblance of yielding, of exhaustion, as Voldemort pulled from him memory after memory, thought after thought...

Though only those which Harry was allowing him to plunder.

The world collapsed into a whirlpool of blood, the red of Voldemort's eyes encompassing the whole of his vision, but Harry kept his mental fire burning, and kept all that really mattered safe, though his hands twitched convulsively as Voldemort searched layer after layer in his mind. It was ever so much worse than he had imagined, far worse than he'd been warned. Like slime oozing across the surface of his mind and then sinking into every cell. Caustic slime that burned where it touched, that left in its wake an imprint of evil to taint his soul.

Finally satisfied, Voldemort stepped back and smiled, wicked enjoyment painted across his face. Harry blinked, clearing his vision of all that red, and noticed Nagini slithering in a circle behind the Death Eaters.

Voldemort clapped his hands just once before he announced, "Behold, the so-called saviour of the world. Is it not delightful, the prospect he brings to us this night? Harry Potter, without a shred of power. The Boy Who Lived, without a trace of magic." A slight frown wrinkled his scaly face. "I'm surprised you didn't note this yourself, Lucius. It's been true for some while. The boy..." Here, Voldemort laughed. "The boy thinks that he can hide the truth, fancies himself adept at Occlusion, but I saw it all the moment he graced us with his presence. He's become little more than a squib."

Harry clenched his fists, knowing that wasn't true, but other than that, he didn't let Voldemort's antics from distract him from what really mattered: keeping his thoughts so well hidden that the Death Eaters didn't even know they were hidden.

"Well, we shall have to change our plans," Voldemort was announcing, his voice consumed with mock sorrow. "Wizard tortures won't mean nearly as much to the boy now that he's barely a wizard." He licked his thin, almost non-existent lips. "Lucius, I believe you had a suggestion?"

A robed man came forward to kneel at Voldemort's feet, right next to where Harry was standing, and again, Harry had the fleeting sensation that someone in the crowd had drawn back from the sight.

"My Lord," came Malfoy's obsequious voice. "Your brilliance exceeds words, my Lord."

Voldemort laid a hand atop Malfoy's hood, and pulled it off, then rippled his snakelike fingers through the man's white-gold hair, separating strands from the tie which had bound them in back. "So good to hear you think so," he purred. "And your suggestion, Lucius?"

"As the boy's little more than a Muggle," Malfoy purred right back, "let him be tormented as a Muggle until it's time to make the sacrifice."

That time, Harry was the one who flinched. Sacrifice?

"Ah, yes," Voldemort replied to the slight gesture. "Lucius didn't explain, Harry? How remiss of him. I take a sacrifice each Samhain. The blood of an enemy, Harry." He shivered, his eyes glowing a deeper red. "How delicious that this time, I'll partake of you."

From somewhere, Harry found his voice, though it hurt to feel words rasping through a throat parched with thirst. "Each Samhain?" he mocked, the sound rough. As much as it hurt, though, speaking seemed to help with the dizziness that had plagued him ever since he'd stood. It gave him something to focus on besides the raging whirlpool of fire that was keeping the real him safe. Besides, cowering had really never been his style. "Each Samhain! Can't you bloody well count? There's only been one Samhain since you crawled your way out of the ooze and into a body, Tom."

A ripple of disbelief coursed through the circle of Death Eaters, the sensation so strong that Nagini stopped moving and stared, her tongue flickering strangely. One Death Eater actually stepped back, out of the circle, but remembered himself a moment later and moved forward again, though the motion seemed... almost reluctant.

Harry couldn't help it; beneath the fire he felt himself think, Oh no, don't give the game away, Snape! You can't be so foolish as to let them see the truth, you just can't. Show them what they want to see, you're the one who taught me that!

Harry spoke again mainly to distract himself from thoughts he knew he shouldn't be indulging, even if it definitely seemed that Voldemort had desisted from the Legilimency.

"What, don't your lackeys use your name, Tom?" He cleared his throat when the dryness in it threatened to choke off further words. "Lucius here knows it; he did have your diary, after all." Harry smirked then, a wicked smile of his own, and glanced down at the kneeling man. "Dobby's doing fine, by the way. Shall I tell him you said 'hi'?"

"Why, you--!" Lucius was on his feet in an instant, his hand reaching out for Harry's neck, but Voldemort was faster still. His wand appearing from nowhere, he gave a flick, and "Crucio" fell from his lips, the incantation sounding almost idle, as though Voldemort had much better things to do and this was a tiresome task indeed.

Lucius Malfoy fell to his side and writhed in the dirt while Nagini, interested, slithered her way into the middle of the circle to watch.

"Finite Incantatem," Voldemort murmured after a moment. "Really, Lucius, you must learn to control your temper. Do you see me spilling his blood before it's time? And as for you--" He returned his attention to Harry. "You're a foolish boy if you think I wasn't celebrating Samhain for many years before the night I slew your parents."

It's not going to work, Harry thought, deep down where it was safe. You're not going to make me lose my temper. I'm going to stay in control of myself, and keep Occluding, and watch for my chance to escape. It has to be coming, it just has to. The dreams are real, the dreams are true...

Defiant green eyes stared back at Voldemort as Harry spoke with the utmost contempt ringing through his rough, raw vocal cords. "Too bad for you that when you slew them, you missed me."

"I did not miss you," Voldemort hissed, stretching out a finger to trace Harry's scar, which burned as the evil wizard touched it. "It's there, for all the world to see, proof that you've been honoured for a time to bear my mark!"

"It's hideous and disfiguring," Harry said flatly, remembering the way Draco Malfoy had described the scar that day in Potions class. Someone in the crowd gave off a choking sound, and it was all Harry could do not to think Shut up, Snape! or really, even yell it. "It's a curse, not an honour," he went on. "Just like those godawful ugly burns on everybody's arm. I notice you don't have one yourself, Tom. Is that a case of you being able to dish it out, even though you can't take it?"

"I'd bind your mouth if I didn't wish to hear your screams," Voldemort spat back. "Perhaps you won't be quite so insolent once you understand your position, Harry. First we shall have some fun. Muggle-style, since it's all you deserve. And then, the sacrifice. I'll have to bleed you, I'm afraid. Tradition, you know. My tradition. You didn't think I let you get so thirsty for no reason at all, did you? Oh yes, I know how thirsty you must be. It's to thicken your blood. And then..."

He pulled Harry to him by the shoulders, his arms so strong that Harry knew it was magic, not muscles, compelling him forward into a close embrace, his entire chest pressed against Voldemort's robes. A chill came straight through them, a chill that suggested the evil wizard wasn't truly alive, though of course he was. He dipped his head to rest his lips against Harry's ear, his tongue flickering out to lick his neck as he spoke in soft, almost loverlike tones, though the words were hardly lovely. "Ah yes, I'll drink mine enemy's blood, and when I've drunk my fill, the sacrifice proper shall begin. You'll burn, my sweet child. You'll burn while you're still alive, and I'll inhale the sweet tang of the smoke, and when it's all over and you're nothing but a blackened husk, why then, I'll grind you into dust. There are Potions, you know, Dark Potions that use such dust. We'll toast you every Samhain, Harry. Literally."

The purpose of the speech had been to frighten him, to make him crumple as though the deed were done already. But Harry wasn't frightened, and he wasn't about to crumple, not when he knew with absolute confidence that it wouldn't come to that, that it couldn't.

And if the point of these ridiculous theatrics is to see me quail with fear, then I'll do just the opposite, Harry decided as Voldemort let him go, expecting no doubt to see his legs collapse beneath him. They wanted to. Harry locked his knees and stayed on his feet.

"Fuck off, Tom," was his casual rejoinder, delivered just as though he really didn't have time for this garbage. And as though he found Voldemort stupid beyond belief.

Voldemort, it seemed, had had enough of games. "Severus," he called, turning slightly to the side. "Come hold him for us. We'll have no magical bindings here, not tonight. No, that would make things easier for him. The boy positively detests you; it's all there in his mind." Voldemort cackled. "He knocks over so many potions in your class because he shrinks away whenever you pass by; he can't abide the thought that you might touch him! So doff your gloves, Severus. Lay your bare hands on him, now, and we'll see how long his reckless courage lasts."

A robed man, tall and thin stepped forward, his voice slightly muffled by his hood as he replied, but Harry easily recognised it. He Occluded all the more fiercely as he braced himself to act his part, to feel again the hate that had since grown into something rather different.

How do you do it? he remembered asking, though it seemed he'd asked in some other life, not this one. Make yourself feel things you don't feel at all?

And the answer. I have a memory. I know how to use it.

Harry had a memory, too, and what was more, after all the time he'd spent with Snape, he had a sense of misdirection. Act the part, some deep piece of him whispered. Play the role. What would these Death Eaters expect to see, to hear? You hated Snape, and you thought he worked for Voldemort; any fool would have suspected that much. But you didn't know for sure, did you? They would all expect Snape to have been too wily for that. And so they'll expect surprise, betrayal, outrage...

"You rat bastard!" Harry shouted, and as Snape came near, he pulled back his hand and slapped the man across the face, just as hard as he could manage. In his condition, it wasn't that fierce a blow, but of course all that mattered was that it appear authentic. "Albus Dumbledore trusted you! But you're on the madman's side, after all! I knew it! I knew it all along!"

Voldemort laughed in true enjoyment. "Ah, his hate before is nothing to what it is, now, Severus. Well done. Well done, indeed."

Harry raised his hand to hit Snape again, but the sight of Voldemort's upraised wand gave him an excuse to back down. "Enough of that, young Harry," the Dark Lord intoned. "Or I shall have to use Imperio on you. Should you like to try resisting it again, and in your current state?" He curled a contemptuous lip.

"My Lord," Snape was saying, on his knees by then, removing his black leather gauntlets even as he spoke. "My hands, the light magic, your potions, my Lord..."

"Oh, we won't bloody your pure precious hands," Voldemort laughed. "Lucius has more finesse than that." He turned to Harry. "Get on your knees!"

Harry stayed upright, defiant. Proud. If the bastard wanted him on his knees, he could damned well make him kneel. Let him try Imperio. It would be a victory, of sorts, that he wouldn't bend, not on his own.

Voldemort, though, was relishing another kind of force, this evening. The Muggle kind. "Severus," he prompted. "Now."

Snape stepped behind him, and then Harry felt warm hands on his shoulders, the grip firm enough to leave bruises as he shoved Harry straight down and forced his legs to bend. It isn't real, Harry told himself beneath the fire. It's a feint, just like those last few Potions classes I attended. It has to look real; it has to look sadistic, and vicious in intent...

But it felt real enough as Snape grasped his arms from behind and dragged them remorselessly together until the slightest move on Harry's part sent agony surging through his shoulders. He didn't think he could wrench himself away without dislocating a joint. Not that that was a remote danger. Dehydrated, starved, still-half weak from Apparating, he wasn't in any shape to brawl, and even if he were, he was still only sixteen and small for his age.

"Lucius, up," Voldemort was saying, his robes rustling as he conjured a chair and seated himself to watch the show. "You shall have your revenge, now, but at my direction, is that much clear?"

"Yes, my Lord," murmured Lucius as he crawled to the seated man and kissed his robes. Voldemort patted him on the head much as though a kinder man might pet a favoured hound. "Conjure needles, my Lucius," he throatily whispered, holding out his hand. "The boy hates needles, as you well know."

A pile of glimmering silver shards appeared in Voldemort's palm.

"Oh, you can do better than that, surely?"

A larger pile materialized, the needles thick and stout like the ones Aunt Petunia used to use with yarn. Only sharper. Far, far sharper.

"The boy's afraid," Snape sneered from behind him, though the hands holding his arms in place said something different. His teacher's fingers shifted in a deliberate motion. It wasn't methodical, and it wasn't anything as obvious as a caress, but it served to bolster Harry, nonetheless. It reminded Harry that however it looked to the rest of the gathering, he in fact wasn't alone.

"He should be afraid," Lucius replied, the words as dark as his tone as he held out his own hands for the needles. Voldemort dropped them one by one into his palms.

"The face, first," came Voldemort's command. "And then you may indulge your wildest dreams, Lucius, but for one thing. Save his eyes for last."

"Yes, my Lord," said Lucius, silver gaze glinting in the moonlight. He'd never replaced his hood.

Even knowing his dreams, even knowing what must be, when a needle came into his line of vision, Harry did again what he'd done in the cell. He reached consciously down into the well of anger, hate, and horror that had been so much of his life, and tried to pull forth an explosive force the likes of which had made those stones half-vanish. But this time, there was little answering reaction. Was he too weak from thirst to manage it? Had he drained himself too far with that last huge surge of magic?

He made the needle heat a bit; that was all.

Not the result he wanted, for Lucius had taken his gloves off as well--for dexterity, Harry supposed--and when he felt the sharp shard of metal warming, his silver eyes narrowed in appreciation. "Ah, very nice," he smoothly remarked, before glancing back at his master. "Heated needles, I should think, my Lord."

He spelled his hands to not get blistered, then used Calorum to make the needle glow red-hot, and brought it close again. Harry tried to bear it bravely, not even whimpering as the thick, ugly needle came close, but when heat and pain pierced slowly through his cheek, he sucked in a harsh breath and clenched his teeth, and whimpered, his eyes filling with tears.

"Auspicious beginning," Lucius murmured, smiling, though the expression didn't reach his eyes. He wasn't sated. Far from it. "Are you sure you wouldn't like one, Severus? Just one?" Another hot needle danced before Harry's eyes as Malfoy held it up for Snape to see.

"You know I can't," Snape growled, shifting to hold both Harry's wrists with one hand. His free arm came around the boy in an embrace that pinned Harry's back against the length of Snape's torso. "Do your worst. For me."

"Save his eyes for last," Voldemort repeated, his voice gone lazy with pleasure. "But do be creative until then. Make the insolent child ask me for mercy."

I don't ask for things I won't get, Harry clearly thought, some part of him satisfied to see Voldemort startled by the claim, though it warned him to keep clear hold of his protective image. I don't. I won't. I can't...

"And make him scream," added Voldemort, leaning back in his chair, hands held idly in his lap.

And that, Harry couldn't deny his captors, though he did try. Six times he felt the blazing needles shoved viciously through his flesh. Six times he held his breath and grit his teeth and waited for the pain to pass. But all Lucius did in response was conjure larger needles, and begin plunging them like daggers into places where they'd scrape against bone.

Harry screamed, then. He screamed himself hoarse, and thrashed against Snape's tightening hold, and before it was over, he lost all semblance of control and bucked like a wild horse, but Snape held him in place, for all of it, every bit, even the last. By then Harry was stripped completely naked, and flat on his back on the dirt. Every inch of his skin was riddled with puncture wounds, needles sticking out of him at hideous angles. More needles were fully embedded inside him, stabbing the interior of his back and legs every time he breathed. They were spelled to stay hot, to burn him for just as long as it pleased Voldemort to watch him suffer.

And then, as the sound of his last screams rebounded off the distant mountains and echoed in the clearing, the worst came to pass.

Lucius sat atop him on his chest, and another man held his legs, but it was Snape who had his large palms affixed to either side of his face. Snape whose thumbs and fingers pried his eyes open and held them that way as Lucius did as the Dark Lord had commanded, and saved his eyes for last.

Harry prayed for death, though he wasn't disposed to go quietly. When Malfoy's fingers passed too close to his teeth, he growled just like a dog and tore a vicious chunk from the bastard's hand, spitting it out like so much offal.

Lucius' response was swift and merciless, though he glanced at Voldemort first and waited for a nod of approval before swinging back his other fist and crashing it straight into the side of Harry's face.

Stars, stars inside the fire... stars and sparks and whirling flames inside the firefirefirefire...

Harry thought then that he would faint, and counted it a mercy, but the feel of Snape's strong hands holding him in place became an anchor keeping him there to endure it. The needle came back, wavering before his eyes, undulating like a serpent about to strike. He struggled to close his eyes, but the reflex was thwarted by those thumbs digging cruelly into his face.

His blood curdled in his veins as the thing came closer, and plunged straight down through the centre of his vision.

Not once, not twice, but over and over in some hideous dance of fear and pain. Tears slid down his face, thick hot pungent tears dripping from his eyes and draining into his mouth. They tasted odd, slick and coppery and cloying, and it came to him that these weren't tears at all. It was blood from his wounds. Blood, coating his skin, and as it flowed, the hands released him. Different hands took over. Colder ones, holding him again so that the other eye might suffer the same fate as the first. But these hands weren't an anchor.

Losing his grip on reality, Harry felt himself slipping away into the depths of a great, deep sea, into waters that quenched his fire, that cooled him and healed him and whispered, deep in his mind, that he had done well.

For he hadn't begged, not once. He hadn't given the craven monster the satisfaction.

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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:

Chapter Twenty-Six: Burning

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Comments very welcome,

Aspen