Chainless Soul

Chainless Soul

Chapter Five

by Cinnamon

Draco came to taunt me that night, I think it was too much for his slippery mind to deal with, having a Weasley locked up in his basement waiting to be tortured. He stood on the other side of the bars and said, “So, Weasley, I hear you’ve developed some spirit. Father’s furious at you.”

I smiled slowly, sweetly, through the bars and shrugged easily. “Sod off, Malfoy.”

He smiled angelically. “If I were you, I’d stop pissing him off. It would be easier for you, after all.”

“I’ve never taken advice from you, and I’m not about to start now.”

“He’s decided that if fear won’t break you, pain will,” he sneered. “And my father knows all the Unforgivable Curses.”

I didn’t reply and Draco quickly grew bored of trying to taunt me. He left and darkness fell outside, dimming the weak sunlight that had filtered through the tiny windows.

I lay there in the straw for a long time, thinking about what would happen if the Malfoys forgot I was down there. If I was left there forever. Would my eyes grow large and glazed over and shiny from lack of light? Would I go blind? Would my muscles rot from disuse and my voice fade into nothing because the muscles that used to work my vocal chords deteriorated? I wasn’t worried about dying of hunger or thirst because I knew I was in danger of going mad long before I died of thirst.

Morbid and dark thoughts kept me awake late into that night, when finally a house elf brought me dinner. I ate musingly and went back to lying in the straw, thinking darker thoughts than I had had cause to all my life. I thought about life and death and how easily one became the other, and in the same way, I thought about love and hate. I wondered what it would be like to be the wolf without the Wolfsbane Potion, wondered if there would be the same rush I had gotten racing Remus in fighting some strange werewolf in a pit while rabid Americans watched and laid money on the outcome of the fight. I wondered, thoughtfully, if I would ever see Remus again, and I longed, tearfully, for my mother.

Morning brought Lucius back into the dungeon. I think breaking werewolves was a hobby to him, and I was his new obsession. He dragged me from the dungeon and upstairs. The light that spilled through the large windows of the mansion was so bright after the darkness of the dungeon that I flinched as he pulled me along.

He took me into another room, this one with a large metal table with short legs in the center of it. A hearth sat in the corner and on it, a large cauldron steamed and bubbled over magical flames that burned white and violet, hot enough so that I could feel the heat like a wall of fire as I stepped into the room.. The pungent smell of it nearly made me faint, and at first, I didn’t know why. A few cautious sniffs however, and the wolf part of my soul hissed and drew back. It was molten silver.

Lucius was smiling with anticipation. “Genius, really,” he told me. “It was Draco himself who came up with the design for this.”

I was appalled at the thought of a father getting his son to help him devise torture devices. “You’re all mad,” I whispered.

I think he took it as a compliment. He pushed me over to the table and made me climb up onto it, lying on my back. The metal table underneath me as cold and I was starting, despite myself, to grow frightened.

“You did not fight or flee from fear,” he said, “Then I will break you with pain.”

“Don’t,” I whimpered, before biting my lip firmly and promising myself I wouldn’t scream.

Lucius just smiled gently at me and waved his wand. “Accio cauldron,” he called, and the cauldron levitated off the fire and came over to hover above me. I watched it worriedly. “I won’t bind you,” he said softly, his eyes glowing. “But you must lie there. You cannot leave this table, that is very important. If so much as one foot of yours touches the floor, the Cruciatus curse will strike you and bring you to your knees. The pain will not stop until you get back onto the table.”

“What is the point?” I whispered raggedly.

He looked surprised. “To teach you how to fight.”

I narrowed my eyes, glancing from him to the pot of molten silver. He hadn’t explained it’s use, but I could guess, and already my stomach clenched in fear. “I’ll fight, I will, just don’t hurt me,” I begged, hating myself for it.

He smiled. “But I want you to want to fight! I want you to want to win! I want to destroy every part of you that clings to humanity until all you are is a hollowed out shell of a girl that carries around a hidden monster that comes out to kill on the full moon. I want you to want to taste blood.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t.”

“I won’t be in here when it starts,” he said, ignoring my plea. “So I will not be here to help you should you fall from the table.”

He left then, mumbling a spell from the doorway that must have activated the charm he had put on the cauldron. It tipped slightly and a drop of molten metal fell, burned a hole through the ragged robes he had given me yesterday. It started to steam and sink into my flesh, rolling a little and dripping off, leaving a seared and shallow indent in my skin. I bit my tongue so hard that I tasted blood in my effort not to scream.

All the breath hissed out of my lungs and a strangled whimper flew from my lips. The burning didn’t subside, not even after the metal had dripped to the table and cooled, and I knew that injuries from silver did not heal as quickly as others did.

I did not know if the Cruciatus spell would hurt me if I sat up, and for a moment, I didn’t move. My eyes were glued on the cauldron above me, I could see the next drop of silver gathering slowly on the rim. My entire body was shaking so hard that I was afraid I was going to pass out, and the scent of seared flesh was heavy on the air.

The drop fell and bounced, a few tiny droplets hitting my stomach hard enough to create little pits. I was worried that the silver would keep burning, going deeper, and it was already agony. I cried out softly, my shaking fingers moving to my stomach, trying to scratch the hardening silver off. It solidified and I picked it off with shaking fingers that stung when I touched it.

Another drop, larger than the rest, had begun gathering above by the time I had finished.

I sat up quickly, the fear of the curse less than the fear of more silver raining over me. The door didn’t seem too far away, and I wondered, panicked, if I jumped, would I reach it before the curse brought me to my knees? Would the curse stop working if I made it to the other side?

Weak whimpers were gathering in my throat and I knew I had to try.

I gathered the strength in my legs and sprung as far from the table as I could.

The second I hit the ground, it was as if a thousand bees had been set lose in my veins, stinging every inch of them and setting fire to my blood. My eyes felt like they wanted to break from their sockets and everything turned red with a fine sheen of blood.

I fell to my knees and screamed, and the screams echoed in the tiny room, sounding louder and louder until I was sure I was going mad with them and my head was about to burst.

Draco had opened the door, and he stood there, sneering down at me as I writhed in agony at his feet. “Finally were a Weasley belongs,” he said. “In the dirt at my feet.”

It was probably his words that gave me the strength to crawl across the floor and climb onto the table, and I lay on my stomach, gasping for breath, hardly feeling the silver dripping onto my back and burning a strange network of scars there. I still have the scars. It had cooled down some, and didn’t burn its way into my flesh, though it was still agony as it seared my skin.

I didn’t feel it though, all I felt was the Cruciatus slowly fading from my body and my echoing screams slowly tapering off into the harsh, uneven sound of my breathing.

Dripping molten silver was nothing compared to that.

Draco was laughing, and I rolled onto my side weakly to stare at him. I had always rather pitied him at school, when he wasn’t doing his best to make me or someone else cry. Surely a boy with a father like his would have no choice but to turn into a monster.

I did not pity him then and I have not pitied him since. Rage boiled in my body and before I thought what I was doing, armed only with the need to scar his pretty face the way he and his father had scarred my body, I leapt to my feet and, snarling, knocked the boiling cauldron out of the air, sending it hurling and spinning, spraying silver everywhere, and splattering all over Draco’s face when it landed at his feet.

That was, of course, Lucius’ intent with that torture. He wanted to teach me to attack the source of my pain and not try to run from it, and it is a lesson I learned well.

There were other exercises over the next few days designed to teach me to react to anything from fear to cold to pain with violence, to destroy whatever caused my discomfort. I would succeed at each task he set me to, but even then, I refused to become the monster Lucius was trying so hard to make me.

I guess I was not progressing as quickly towards losing my humanity as Lucius would have liked. He had never, after all, dealt with a female werewolf before, and he did not understand that pain and fear were nothing to me. Survival is about doing whatever is necessary to survive, and learning to attack to stop pain was not enough to turn me into a monster. I was still human because the most important thing I had was my dignity, and he hadn’t yet taken that from me.

By the end of the first week, my body was bruised and scarred, but I still had the courage to be insolent, to sneer at him and glare at him. To try and talk him into letting me go.

He was panicking, because I was supposed to already be an animal, and his American business partners were arriving in a few days to view his ‘stock’. I was not the only wolf he was trying to sell. He was worried I would not be broken by the time they arrived, and he mentioned more than once in my presence that he already had some potential buyers for me.

I guess that was what led him to do what he did to me next. Desperation. I understand the emotion too well now, because that is what his next lesson taught me. Desperation and degradation, and rage.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the minds of the Malfoys. They’re all sadistic and mad. They’re so full of self-importance and seeing another being crying and begging for mercy, mercy that only they can give, is to them, just proof of their supremacy.

I think if things had continued the way they had begun, with the pain and the fear, I would have been driven mad, surely, but not driven to the desperation that is apparently required of Lucius’s monsters.

I wonder if Draco realizes that Lucius had already done to him what he was doing to me?

I haven’t allowed myself often to think of what happened next often, though of course I see it all over again in my nightmares.

There was something about breaking his werewolves that Lucius took perverse pleasure in. He took pleasure in having the blood on his hands, and sometimes even magic wasn’t good enough for him and he had to get physical. He would beat me and whip me until my back was bloodied and burning, and then he would leave me shackled to the wall while my body slowly healed itself. I am thankful, at least, for the werewolf blood in my body that allowed me to heal faster than humans. There was no time for any of the wounds to become infected.

The day when Lucius’ desperation reached a fever pitch, I was lying broken and bloody at his feet in the small room with the table he had used for the silver torture. He had just taken out his rage on my body by beating me with his fists until I could no longer stand, and I think it infuriated him further that I would not attack him back. He wanted me to fly into a mad fury and try to kill him, but I wouldn’t, because I knew it was what he wanted, and I knew it wouldn’t make the beating stop. So I stood still, my eyes closed, not screaming, until my legs collapsed beneath me, and then, while my body put itself together again, I lay on the floor and, just to make him angrier, I started to sing. Maybe I was mad, even then. The lullaby my mother used to sing to me felt comforting as I softly sang the words, and Lucius kicked me hard in the side.

“Stop it,” he hissed.

I smiled up at him, which was hard because my face was broken and bruised. I kept singing.

“I will break this insolence, you stupid girl!” He raged, but I wasn’t really listening. I had heard it all before.

He pulled me to my feet by my hair and then let go. When my legs threatened to collapse beneath me, he pulled out his wand. “Don’t move,” he threatened. His eyes were glowing with insanity, and he was stroking his face absently, mumbling to himself. Finally, a chillingly gleeful smile lit up his sickeningly handsome face, and he said, “You think I won’t break you? You’re too proud to be broken? We’ll see about that.”

He had, of course, decided that if it was my dignity that kept me from being broken, then he would have to crack my dignity before he could crack my spirit. He was right.

At first I didn’t understand. He brought me to a small bathing chamber, and I hadn’t bathed in the week since he had brought me. “Clean yourself,” he snapped, before slamming the door behind him as he left.

The bathing chamber was small and sparse, with only a small bathtub sunk into the stone floor and a sink beside it, a mirror overtop that took one look at me and whistled sympathetically. There were tiny bottles of soaps and such, and, almost afraid to trust that this was anything more than another way to break me, I approached the bathtub hesitantly. There was a row of knobs and I turned a few, water pouring out to fill the little tub, already laced with oils and bubbles. I filled the tub with lavender bubbles and strawberry oil, and then gingerly lowered myself into the water. It stung and I hissed as my beaten body sank into the hot water, but it was the most delicious feeling I’ve ever felt. I could feel the dirt and blood being pulled away by the water and I closed my eyes, fighting tears. A bath was enough to do to me what a week of torture couldn’t; it made me cry.

I washed my body and then my hair, which took a long time. The whole time I worked on my hair, I was worried that Lucius would return. He didn’t, and I passed a few hours in the bath. I got out and wrapped myself in a huge, fluffy towel and then started combing through my tangled hair.

There were even some clean clothes laid out for me. Simple and worn, of course, but clean, and I pulled them on gratefully. Of course I knew I would have to pay for all that kindness, but at the time it didn’t matter. Even now, had I known what the price would be, I don’t think I would have been able to resist.

It was Narcissa who came to fetch me from the bathing chamber, and the look on her face was hard, unyielding, and cold. I think, now, that she may have been jealous, but I cannot even begin to imagine why. She did not speak to me or touch me, only led me deep into the mansion, down stairs and up hallways, back to my cell in the dungeon.

Narcissa grabbed my arm with her sharp fingers and jerked me towards her. “Do as you’re told and it won’t be that painful,” she hissed. I think it was her version of mercy.

I just turned my nose up at her and didn’t reply. She laughed softly, coldly, and then turned to leave. A key grated in the lock on the other side of the door, and I allowed my shoulders to slump in relief, believing that day’s horrors were over.

My body ached, and I made my way over to the straw that I used to sleep in. There were rats nesting there, they always claimed my bed when I wasn’t there, and I did not have the heart to force them away. Animals have to stick together, I knew. Even though the rats would certainly have torn chunks from my feet while I was sleeping if they got the chance. They’d done it before.

I sat carefully, leaning against the stone wall and closing my eyes. My body was trembling and I was wondering absently how much longer I could survive this before I died.

I heard the key in the lock again, and I lifted my head as the door to my cell swung open. It was Draco, and I rolled my eyes and let my head fall back to my knees, hugged against my chest. I assumed he had come to taunt me some more, and I wasn’t sure I had the patience left to deal with it.

“You’re looking cleaner than when I saw you last,” he sneered, stepping into the cell. His father had healed the scars left by the silver I had splashed in his face; my stomach still bore the scars.

I watched him warily. Usually he just taunted me from outside the cell.

He kept talking. “I think you should thank me. It was, after all, my suggestion that father let you bathe.”

A few wild thoughts tore through my mind then. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as I had thought; maybe he wanted to help me. After all, he had showed me mercy by pleading with his father so I could bathe. His next words reassured me that it was not mercy, however.

“I figured if I have to touch you, you may a well be clean.”

I got warily to my feet. “Get out of here.”

He smiled sweetly at me. “I can’t, Weasley. Father says I have to ‘humiliate, degrade, and destroy’ you. I think those were his words. He wanted to do it himself, of course, but didn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’s making me do it.”

I licked my lips; my hands were shaking. I asked, without wanting to know the answer, “Do what?”

He didn’t reply, he was inspecting me carefully, his lips curled a little in disgust. He came towards me and I skirted around him, backing up until I was in the middle of the cell. “Don’t move,” he said absently, walking around me and studying me. I swallowed nervously.

“Stop looking at me,” I tried to snap, but my voice was trembling.

He glanced at my face and smirked, stepping even closer, so I could feel his breath on my face. He grasped my jaw and tilted my face up, inspecting it, and then roughly grabbing my hair and twisting it around his fist, studying that as well. And then he forced my mouth open and looked at my teeth.

I kicked him in the shin and jerked away, rubbing my lips. I could still taste his fingers in my mouth. “Don’t touch me,” I growled.

“I’ve always hated redheads,” he scoffed, pulling his wand from his pocket. “Now then, let’s get on with this, I’ve got things to do, you know. Christmas presents to unwrap and such.”

It was Christmas Eve and I hadn’t even known it. “If you touch me,” I said, “I swear, I’ll kill you.”

He didn’t seem concerned. In fact, he checked his watch and sighed. “Trust me, I’d rather not.”

“Then don’t.”

He smiled. “I don’t want to have to touch you, Weasley, but I must admit, the prospect of making you scream does have some appeal. Besides, it shouldn’t be all that bad for you. I mean, most of the girls and half the boys at school wanted me.” He tangled my hair around his fist again and jerked me towards him, stroking my face gently. “Maybe you’ll even like it.” His fingers were still touching my face almost tenderly, and I panicked, pushing against his chest hard and pulling away.

“Don’t,” I whimpered, terrified. I had only succeeded in pissing him off, and he snarled as he grabbed me by the baggy clothes I wore and pushed me hard enough to make me stumble, falling back onto the pile of straw. I smacked my head on the wall and lay there, stunned, while the rats that were sleeping in the straw squealed and tore at my flesh in their struggle to escape.

Draco fell to his knees and pinned me down, and I went wild beneath him, scratching at him with my nails and trying to twist away. He laughed as he easily restrained me, until I nearly succeeded in kneeing him in the groin. Still, even as he held me down, I didn’t scream. I refused to scream, and I would have fought forever, except he grew tired of the fight, and whispered, “Petrificus Totalus,” and I could no longer move.

Draco didn’t speak anymore, though he growled under his breath as he methodically went about following his father’s orders. While he raped me, I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t make a sound, and I was glad the curse he’d put on me kept me from giving him the privilege of hearing me beg. My eyes were wide open, and I was staring blankly at the wall on the other side of the cell, his raspy breathing the only sound. I remember feeling the terrible pain of the whole thing distantly, as if I wasn’t really there at all. I had retreated as far from that horror as I could. I could feel him tearing me apart, however, could feel myself start to bleed.

Shame was making me sick, and I wanted to die. It was worse than anything else they had done to me. Maybe if Draco had done it in a rage, if he had hit me or beaten me and then raped me, it wouldn’t have been so bad. It wouldn’t have been so cold.

“Scream,” he hissed, still on top of me, still tearing me apart. He whispered the counter curse and I was finally able to close my eyes.

I knew that it would get worse if I didn’t let them break me. They would take everything they could from me and twist me until I snapped in half, and I knew that I’d die if they did anything else to me, so I gave him what he wanted. I carefully set aside my dignity and pride, as if I were making another part of my soul. Inside this other part, I put my pride and my heart, carefully, and then all my memories of people who would die of shame if they could only see me now. My mother, my father, my brothers, and Remus. I forced all of my memories of them inside this part of my soul, and then I walled it off, I would give them everything but that. Nothing that happened to me from that point on would have anything to do with who I was, because my identity was locked in a tiny part of my soul that they would never touch.

I would be an animal for them because if I didn’t, they’d destroy me.

I threw my head back and screamed until my throat was raw and I could taste blood. I coughed a little, spots of blood appearing on my lips, and Draco laughed, licking it off.

When he finished, he crawled off me, kicking some of the dirty straw over me in disgust. He started fixing his clothing. “Did you love him?” he asked silkily, tidying his hair.

I didn’t move or speak, and he continued.

He smiled down at me. “We tracked you, you know. You and that other wolf. Not for very long, just a few hours, the night before we caught you. We only had one silver arrow, we couldn’t take either of you then, we had to wait for a chance to get one of you alone, but I saw the way you were with him. And so I started thinking. How on earth did the sweet littlest Weasley become a werewolf? I assume the wolf who you were with was the one who made you. You two stayed together. Hunted together. Lived together. And so I was wondering, who on earth could the other wolf be? Would you have stayed with a monster who attacked you unless you knew him before? But where would Weasley have met a werewolf?” His smile grew predatory. “And then I remembered that professor. It must have been him. That werewolf professor.”

My body jerked, flinching a little, and he took that for an admission. “Don’t,” I warned him softly, but he didn’t listen.

“And then I started wondering if Ginny had been a bad little girl. With the professor, I mean. Because her family didn’t know where she was, and there she was deep in some woods, with a man twice her age, a monster, and I had to wonder. Did she convince herself she loved him?” He paused for a moment, smirking at me. “And then I wondered if you were as good a whore to him as you are for me.”

I growled in the back of my throat but didn’t reply, didn’t even look at him, and he grew irritated.

“Did he tell you he loved you? Did he?”

I licked my lips and closed my eyes. Remus hadn’t, after all, told me he loved me.

“Is that a no?” He hissed, very softly. “But then, it must be. Why would an older man fall for a stupid little girl? Especially the last of the Weasleys. Dirt poor, you never were good for much, were you? I bet he’s glad we took you from him. I bet he only did it out of pity.”

He never got to say anything more, because something started to crumble inside of me, some fundamental thing that held me together and kept the wolf part of me separate from the human part, and the two halves meshed into one horrible whole. The wolf lunged forward and took control of me, and before I could blink, with a speed and grace I had only ever known as a wolf, I leapt to my feet and attacked him. My hands closed around his throat as we fell back onto the floor, me on top this time, my nails pressing so hard into his neck that tiny trails of blood began running from the cuts they made.

I didn’t say anything, I was growling and smashing his head into the stone, kneeling on his chest so he could not push me away. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip his throat out with my teeth.

There was only a shred of my normal self still there inside, and it was whispering, ‘don’t. you’re just like him if you do. Just an animal like him.’

But I still smashed his head into the floor a number of times, until his pretty silver hair was pink with blood and tears ran down his face. His hands were pushing weakly at me, but he couldn’t shove me away.

Lucius arrived then, and kicked my side hard, sending me crashing off of Draco and to the floor, crouching on all fours like the animal they had tried so hard to make me. I was still growling, and my hands were wet with blood.

Lucius was watching me with a smile, even as he helped his sniveling son to his feet. He took a step towards me and I flinched back, hissing. “Don’t touch me,” I snarled.

He laughed. “Whatever you did, Draco, it certainly worked!”

The love I had thought would give me the strength to survive this was, in the end, the thing that they had used to break me.