Chainless Soul

Chainless Soul

Chapter Four

by Cinnamon

I still don’t know what happened to Remus that night. Maybe he was too exhausted after all the sleepless nights I knew he had had lately, with the worrying and the full moon. Maybe he changed into a wolf still lying in the bed the way I remember, and slept through the night. I hope that’s what happened, and that he didn’t spend the night out in the woods, searching for me. Because I wasn’t there.

Eventually, sitting there by the creek, lost in thought, became even too much for me, even in my thoughtful mood. The wolf, though restrained by the Wolfsbane Potion, still existed in the back of my mind, and I wanted to run and hunt and explore.

I leapt over the creek and took off as fast as I could go, the wind hitting my face like frozen daggers, the moon high above. I became oblivious to everything except the snow under my feet. I think that’s why I never saw them coming, not until it was too late, anyway. They hunted me and I, a hunter myself, did not even sense them until it was too late.

At the last possible second, as the silver-tipped arrow of the crossbow sped through the air towards me, I heard the wind hissing around the shaft, and I turned to look. It was too fast, I couldn’t even hope to get out of the way, and the arrow slammed into my shoulder with enough force to knock me off my feet. I yelped as I hit the snow, the silver fire already spreading through my bloodstream and burning like molten metal. My chest was shuddering with my heavy breathing, and I tried, weakly, to get to my feet.

The hunters were laughing as they approached me, and I whined in panic as I struggled to get to my feet. I collapsed again and lay there panting, my eyes burning with terror as one of the hunters fell to his knees beside me. He grabbed the arrow and pulled it roughly from my shoulder, and I snarled. Then I saw who it was who had shot me, and icy fear made my body numb. Lucius Malfoy knelt beside me, a bloodied silver arrow in his hand. He was smiling.

“Is it a werewolf?” The other hunter called, excitement in his voice.

Lucius nodded, grinning. “The rumors were right, this forest is overrun with the dirty beasts.”

The other hunter came into view and I knew before seeing him that it was Draco Malfoy. He was sneering down at me. “It’s a rather small one, isn’t it?” He asked.

“Small or not, it will serve its purpose. It will fetch a handsome price.”

Draco kicked me hard in the side and a low cry escaped my throat. Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s weak!”

“We will, of course, teach it to be fierce before we sell it,” Lucius said.

I whimpered again and tried to move, but by now the silver fire had spread to every part of my body and I was in agony.

The last thing I remember before consciousness slipped away is thinking, “This must be what dying feels like.” And then I thought I died.

I didn’t, of course. The arrow had been tipped with enough silver to hurt me and make me helpless, not enough to kill. Draco and Lucius somehow carried my limp body back to Malfoy Manor while I was unconscious, and I woke up the next morning, naked and huddled on a pile of rotting straw in the corner of a cell in a large, cold dungeon.

At first, I recalled nothing of what had happened. I moaned softly and called Remus’s name, and when no one answered, I carefully opened my eyes. My entire body hurt, as if my veins had been bruised, and my head ached fiercely. The straw was itchy and the air smelled of dried blood and mildew. The taste of terror was still thick in my throat, and for a moment, I didn’t remember why. My shoulder ached and when it finally came back to me, I started to cry.

There was a filthy, damp blanket tossed in the corner, and I crawled across the rough stone floor and picked it up with trembling hands, pulling it around my shoulders. It smelled of rain and I was reminded of Remus; I cried even harder.

Far off in the depths of the dungeon, I heard the harsh sound of a door opening, dragging along the floor, and I flinched. It seemed as if the silver on the arrow had hurt every part of me, and my hearing was still as keen as it had been when I was a wolf. I could hear three sets of footsteps approaching, and I fled back to the hay, trying to hide under the blanket.

The three people were talking, and I recognized two of them as Lucius and Draco. The third must have been Narcissa, Draco’s mother.

“Really,” she said, her voice sounding sour. “I don’t see why I have to come down here, it’s simply dreadful here. My hair will frizz up again and I’ve got company tonight.”

“Come, now, Cissa,” Lucius said soothingly. “You have a wonderful eye for animal flesh, I wish to get your opinion on the matter. It’ll look human now.”

Draco, when he spoke, sounded remarkably chipper, and my hands clenched into fists as I listened. “I bet it’s a pathetic little thing, really. You saw how small it is, father.”

“And you saw how fast it was running. You of all people should know that size doesn’t matter, Draco.”

“Father!” Draco cried.

They had arrived outside my cell now, and I could feel them staring at the pile of straw I quivered in. There was a silence, and then Narcissa sneered, “It’s hiding.”

“No matter,” Lucius said easily. “Imperio”

My fear and loneliness was washed away and an echoing emptiness that was oddly comforting fell over my mind. Then Lucius commanded, “Stand up,” and I suddenly remembered where I had heard ‘imperio’ before; an Unforgivable Curse.

It seemed natural to do as he commanded, and I didn’t even bother to fight.

“Step forward,” Lucius commanded now, and I stepped out of the hay, the blanket falling from my shoulders. The three of them studied me through the bars, Narcissa in shock, Lucius with something like surprised lust, and Draco with something that looked like blossoming recognition.

“It’s female,” Narcissa gasped, running her eyes over my naked body. I couldn’t turn away, and tears began building in my eyes. I could feel Draco lazily running his eyes over me.

“That doesn’t matter,” Lucius said quickly. “Females sometimes fight even better than males.” He turned thoughtful. “She does look familiar, though. I’m sure I should recognize her. Probably a Weasley by the colouring. Draco, do you know her?”

Draco’s eyes had skimmed all the way to my toes, and then they slowly skipped back up to my face. He was smirking, and for a long while, his eyes held mine. And then he said distinctly, “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Lucius’s eyes shone with a strange mixture of disappointment and excitement. “Ahh, well, she can’t be a Weasley then, you’d recognize her. No matter, this is excellent. She’s quite comely, isn’t she, Cissa?”

Narcissa wrinkled her nose and sniffed daintily. “If you go for the half-starved, freckled waif look, I suppose.”

Rubbing his hands together and inspecting me, Lucius nodded. “She’ll fetch a large price, I daresay. I may even keep her for myself. Come, Cissa, we must prepare for her training.” Almost an afterthought, he added, “I suppose some clothing would be necessary.” He mumbled the counter curse and I could move again. I knelt carefully and picked up the blanket, wrapping it around my shoulders with all the dignity I could manage. I didn’t look directly at any of them, only tilted my head proudly and turned my back on them, moving to the far end of the cell, which, as tiny as the cell was, was not far enough away. I sat slowly, my body still aching, and stared vacantly into space. I didn’t want them to know how terrified I was.

Lucius watched me for a moment and then turned to Narcissa. “Well? How much do you think she is worth?”

Narcissa’s lips pursed and she said carefully, “If you train her right, in all ways, I suppose she may bring you quite a sum. If she survives training, of course.” She was watching Draco carefully, noting the way he watched the girl. “I daresay, Draco seems taken with her,” she said acidly. “He’ll probably volunteer to help with the training.”

“Well, mother, she is quite adorable,” Draco said silkily. “I may insist you let me keep her as a pet.”

Narcissa slapped him across the face and hissed, “None of this would be necessary if you had kept your pants on and your mouth shut.”

“Now, now,” Lucius said gently, taking her arm. “You mustn’t upset yourself, darling, come along and I shall have the house elves make you a nice cup of chamomile tea to calm your nerves.” They walked away, and Draco still stood there, watching me and smiling, despite the handprint on his cheek.

“Odd, isn’t it?” Draco said finally, twirling his wand absently. I didn’t reply, and he continued. “I could have sworn you were a Weasley.”

“You know exactly who I am, Draco Malfoy,” I said hollowly.

He grinned mercilessly. “Oh, that’s true, I do. Except I don’t think you know who you are any longer. I had heard you ran away, which means, of course, you have no idea what’s gone on in your family since you left. They’ve disowned you.”

“Liar,” I hissed.

He just shrugged. “Believe what you will. You’ll never see them again anyway. Brilliant luck, that. My father and I went out hunting a werewolf and we found you. I didn’t know you were a werewolf.” He smiled. “Though I always knew you were dirt, and this just confirms it.”

I knew he was trying to bait me and I firmly kept my mouth shut.

“You know what he’s going to do to you, don’t you? My father? He hates werewolves almost as much as he hates Mudbloods and Muggles. He’s going to make you a fighter. It’s all the rage over in America. On the nights of the full moon, people gather in magical stadiums almost like Quidditch Pitches and fight werewolves. The last wolf standing wins the prize for its owner. Father’s become an avid trainer. He likes the challenge of breaking the human part left in the wretched animal and teaching it to be a monster. He’s quite good at it, one of the best in the business I’ve heard.”

“Your father,” I spat acidly, turning to glare at him, “Makes money by capturing werewolves and forcing them to fight each other? And he claims I’m the monster.”

“There was a bit of bad business a few years ago,” Draco said with an angelic smile. “My family’s finances were nearly ruined after I, er, had a bit of an indiscretion with an older woman. She slipped me some veritaserum into a glass of rum and after I’d drunk that, I spilled all my father’s dirty secrets. The blackmail was brutal, she took us for nearly everything we had, until father grew tired of it and arranged an accident to kill her. Should have done that in the beginning, I say, but she was a prominent member of society or some such thing. He’s nearly got all of our fortune back training werewolves to kill each other, but I must say, Weasley, I’ve never been so interested in watching the process until now. He’s going to break you and I’ll be around to laugh at the pieces he leaves behind.” He smiled slowly. “Oh, and you do know hat Mother meant when she said that you should be trained ‘in all ways’, don’t you? Because surely a werewolf fighter who doubles as a whore every other night of the month will fetch twice as much.” He laughed. “I shall certainly be around when father starts teaching you that.”

It felt like a pool of acid was swirling in my stomach but I didn’t reply, and Draco must have grown bored. He left a few minutes later, and only when I was sure he was gone, did I finally let myself cry.

A house elf brought me clothing a short while later and, though the dress was shapeless and ragged, I pulled it on gratefully.

“We bring food,” the elf said dully, before turning to go.

“Wait,” I called, and the elf paused. “Did… Do you know Dobby? He used to work here, I think.”

The elf turned slowly to face me, its eyes glowing a watery red. “We do not speak his name here.” The elf left quickly, and I curled back up in my straw and cried for hours.

What began following that day was what I can easily call the worst time of my life. ‘Training’ was nothing more than a variety of physical and psychological tortures designed to slowly breakdown my will and drive me mad. There was a sick reason to each thing Lucius put me through, and even now, the nightmares of that time wake me screaming in the night.

The first day of my training, Lucius told me that I looked like a ‘nice girl’. He then went on to say, “The nice girls make the best fighters, so I have great hopes for you, girl.” He had never bothered to ask my name. “The sweet ones are the best, because once that sweetness is broken, madness comes so fast that not a hint of humanity is left. I’ll teach you, girl. I’ll drive the goodness out of you until you’re just an animal.” He smiled serenely at me and I wondered if he thought I’d be pleased at the prospect.

His first method of training involved fear. “Fear is a weapon. When an animal is afraid, it runs. You must learn not to run from fear, but to attack it. Otherwise, you’ll spend the entire time in the pit running from your attacker and crying. I’ve seen it happen once or twice, much to the embarrassment of the owner of the beast, of course.” His voice was jolly and kind, almost fatherly, though I stood in the tiny, windowless room he had brought me to and did not reply. I was trying not to look terrified, trying not to let anything show on my face. I had forced my mind away from there and the fatherly hand he had resting on my shoulder as he told me what form my training was to take that day. I was far away, running through the snowy forest with Remus at my side, and that was why I missed it when he told me what, exactly, was going to happen to me that day.

The next thing I knew, heavy, rusted leg irons were being locked around my ankles, thick chains binding them to the wall, not even as long as my forearm. “I chain the legs so that the hands are free to fight with,” he explained, smiling.

I blinked down at the shackles and then squeezed my eyes shut, slipping back into my memories, forcing the cold fear away.

“Snakes!” I heard Lucius say brightly. “All girls are afraid of snakes.”

My eyes flew open and I bit my lip, listening to the soft whispers in my mind in another language. Already, almost involuntarily, my mind was preparing for the snakes by switching to Parseltongue. Lucius, of course, didn’t know I spoke it. He didn’t know I was the same little girl he had slipped Tom Riddle’s diary to. He didn’t know that the spell that had enabled Tom Riddle to come out of the diary had involved a joining of souls, and that a part of Tom Riddle’s soul lived inside mine. I had commanded the basilisk with Parseltongue on Tom’s command, sending the monster after people at Hogwarts in my first year, and I could still speak it. I did not fear snakes.

Of course, I did not tell him so, as he brought a tank of snakes into the small, dark room.

“Half are venomous,” he told me, glancing down at the writhing coils of snakes in the tank. “So try not to let them bite you.” Without another word, he turned the tank over and some of the snakes hissed as they fell to the floor in a huge knot near my feet. I watched them began to untangle themselves and tried to look frightened, and Lucius nodded once, satisfied, before leaving the room, closing the door and casting me into darkness.

I could feel them brush against my bare feet, and I almost smiled a little in the darkness. I sat carefully, leaning against the wall, and then, in a soft hiss, I said, “Hello.”

If snakes had ears, I am sure there would have been a bunch of snake-ears perking up curiously at my voice. After all, they had sensed the wolf in me with their tongues in the air, and a werewolf who speaks Parseltongue must be even more rare than a regular human.

As one, the snakes came closer to her, their tongues darting out curiously. “Sssscared?” One hissed, scenting my fear on the air.

“Not of you,” I replied honestly. I held out my hand and one of the tinier, probably incredibly venomous, snakes slipped into my hand and curled up in the warmth of my palm. I smiled in the darkness, finding odd comfort in the heavy snake, and my smile widened as I blinked back tears when more of the snakes approached, slipping on to me and curling up, wrapping themselves around my ankles, my knees, my waist, my arms, and my shoulders.

“We do not harm sisters of Parsel,” claimed a sleepy snake voice near my ear. A boa constrictor was settling in to sleep around my neck.

“Parsel?” I asked, soothed by the heavy snakes who were coiling all around me almost protectively.

“She was the First Sssssnake,” claimed the tiny snake in my palm.

“Goddess of Sssssnakes,” hissed another.

“We are bound in the sssssisterhood of Parsel,” whispered another.

Bound in the sisterhood. I had never been bound in a sisterhood of anything before, and a warm sense of belonging, even to a sisterhood of snakes, wrapped around me nearly as tight as the boa around my neck, and strangely, I slipped into a soft, restful sleep.

I don’t know what Lucius expected to find when he returned hours later. Maybe he had thought I would have been so terrified that I would have started grabbing the snakes and flinging them against the wall, trying to crush their heads or something. He certainly did not expect to find me curled up, asleep, with them all around me.

“Get up,” he shouted, face turning red. “You will sleep when I give you leave to do so, and until then, you will do as I say! I promise you, you stupid girl, I will have you broken before the next full moon! “

“You won’t,” I snapped back, rising to my feet and glaring insolently at him. “I’m not that easy to break.” Maybe it was the way his eyes widened at my first show of disrespect for him that decided me. After all, the way things were looking then, I was destined to die in some perverted American pit, torn apart by another werewolf going through the same training as I was going through now. What, really, did it matter if I went out with spirit and courage rather than silence and dignity? I tossed my head arrogantly, my tangled hair flashing in the light spilling in from the hall. “My father will certainly here of this.”

His eyes narrowed and he said condescendingly, “If I feared your father, girl, I’d just be sure he didn’t find out. But I don’t fear him. If he is anything to fear, he’s probably abandoned and disowned you long before now, cursed as you are.”

I scowled and hissed softly, “Bite him,” to the snakes who were watching the scene curiously from the floor. The cobra near his feet rose up and spat, prepared to attack, and Lucius glanced from it to me quickly before mumbling something under his breath and waving his wand. The snakes disappeared with a soft pop and he stepped closer, grabbing my chin roughly. His fingers pressed into my skin hard enough to bruise. “A Parselmouth?” He whispered, his breath hot against my face. “And just who is your father, girl?”

My eyes narrowed dangerously and I fought the urge to spit in his face. I wouldn’t tell him who my father was, of course I wouldn’t. I was still so sure that I could get through whatever he had planned for me by being brave and noble.

I moved so fast that he didn’t have time to flinch, my hand curling into a claw, my nails raking his pale cheek, three lines of blood appearing where they had ripped the skin.

He backhanded me across the face, his rings slashing open my lower lip, but I didn’t care, even though the force was enough to knock me back against the wall.

“Stupid girl,” he said between clenched teeth. “Maybe you don’t fear snakes, but there will be something you fear, and I will break you.”

My chin was dripping with blood but I still had the courage to shoot him a hateful glare through the curtain of my hair. He grabbed me roughly by the wrist, unlocking the shackles with an easy flip of his wand, and dragging me from the tiny room. I suppose I should have been scared about what he intended to do to me, but I wasn’t. After all, I was sorted into Gryffindor in my first year, wasn’t I? I must have had some degree of courage. Some would call it stupidity.

“One would think you weren’t afraid, stupid girl,” he ranted as he pulled me along. “I suppose it does not matter, it is one less thing to have to break you of. But I will break you, I promise you that. When I’m done with you, you’ll kneel at my feet and beg for forgiveness for this insolence.”

I laughed. Maybe I was asking for a quick death, I don’t know.

He brought me back to the dungeon, it was really quite anticlimactic. He tossed me back into my cell and locked the door, leaving quickly, and I just lay there on the floor, idly rubbing my arm where I had smacked it when he pushed me in, and staring up at the drippy ceiling, wondering how long it was going to take to be broken, wondering if I had the strength to survive it, and wondering if I even wanted to.