Enslavement

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

PART I

Chapter 1

Worldly Woes

Harry awoke to a dripping sound and soft mumbling. As usual, it was a cold and unyielding dungeon floor on which he had been sleeping. He somnolently turned around to his other companions, eliciting a few cricks from his stiff bones and new pains to make themselves known.

Ron, sitting against his own wall, was counting the individual freckles that dusted his grimly, pale skin with rapt concentration. Hermione was huddled in a corner between her and Ron's wall, murmuring some broken passages which sounded as though they were from a schoolbook, though none was in sight.

Their behaviour was not as strange as it would have been nearly two months ago, nor would the iron bars and the hard, moist stone floor. Voldemort won the final battle and now Hogwarts was his main headquarters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were stowed in the lower dungeons of the castle, caged like common animals, and specially segregated from the rest of their fellow captives.

Harry had seen each one of his other friends being dragged out of the neighbouring cells to be claimed by someone and condemned to a life of slavery. Neville, Dean, Seamus, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Parvati's twin sister Padma Patil, Fred and George, and the lists go on. One by one, they were ripped away from the iron bars onto which they feebly clung.

When the guards and the buyers had come by again to collect both Fred and George together, mercifully, Ron had had a fit; he had tried to fight for his twin brothers by thrashing about and keeping a menacing hold on their new master's cloak. But he had been quickly subdued with a single incantation, and left to bleed on the floor, in the lay care of Harry and Hermione, the latter of whom had managed to curb some of the bleeding and had closed off most of the wounds. Neither Harry nor the guard knew she could do this.

"What?" she had said, when Harry had ogled at her in awe. "Just thought after first year that being around you is just going to probably become more and more dangerous every year. So I taught myself."

Fortunately, as a result Ron hadn't died - he had survived but hadn't moved a lot for many days to follow to the point where he developed pressure sores. It was amazing how little effort it took to cause harm, yet it took so much more to undo it.

One thing they could find relief in was that Voldemort hadn't cared for a personal visit to their iron abode. They were grateful that he hadn't taken any one of them away and forever separate Harry from the only friends had ever known, because Harry was sure Voldemort would do anything to crush his spirit. Harry didn't know why it was they who were last to remain. Perhaps no one wanted them; they were the worst disgraced after all, for if Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix had been the face of the crushed main opposition to Voldemort, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were undoubtedly the nose.

With all his being he now dreaded the day those iron bars would creak open and make way for the person who was going to take any one of them and break their triangle of friendship. He was sure his fear was shared. It was just never spoken of aloud, too painful to contemplate it was. He was so vulnerable being emotionally attached to two other people. It would have been more bearable had he had little to love. It was now just a matter of time before one of them would be taken away and probably never to be seen again.

The shock of defeat took long to come to terms with. The Light side had lost and was now at the mercy of Voldemort's whims. They were held captive in their own home, Hogwarts. The irony stabbed at Harry in the unexpected of moments. It left him laughing and crying at once. The one place where they thought they were safest was the place in which his fellow schoolmates and professors were tortured and sold off like livestock.

The rusty iron bars groaned open and let in a dark-cloaked figure with a tray walked. The guard stooped low and threw down three dirty bowls on the floor. He turned around and stalked out of sight after locking the gate, darkness and shadows following the black of his cloak.

Breakfast was served.

They were fed twice each day, in the morning and in the evening. The food was as bland as one could imagine: a murky grey dish with a similar consistency to porridge but not quite. That was as far as Harry could deduce what the food was since his eyesight was very lamentable without his glasses, which lay broken beyond repair in his pockets. Try though Hermione had, it proved futile without the aid of a wand.

Nonetheless, the broken spectacles were something of a source of morose pride for Harry to still have them. Apart from the clothes on their back, they owned nothing else. This effectively meant that with his glasses Harry owned more than his friends.

The three of them crawled towards the bowls and took one each. They were never served anything else than this excuse of gruel. Their stomachs did grow used to it. In the earlier days it would make them ill and they would spill the food back onto the floor. And now that it was on the floor, it wasn't going anywhere else. So having limited space they enforced tolerance upon their stomachs, for it wouldn't do to have vomit on a floor which was already runny with moisture. Besides the need to maintain the very little hygiene they observed, the food was served rarely and in desperately short supply. The three former Gryffindors had no choice as usual but to eat their food ravenously in silence.

The guard came back after a few minutes to take the dishes away. He didn't close the iron gate this time. Instead, someone else walked in.

***

Severus Snape was never a man of much patience. Nor did he harbour any vestiges of useless hope, be it that for a free world or the escape of one Albus Dumbledore.

The guards charged with patrolling the vicinity of Dumbledore's prison area had just summoned the nerve to barge into his office attached to his classroom and report the old headmaster absent.

"He just wasn't there!" one of the guards had managed to pant, panic wild in their eyes.

Severus felt that panic too, as he felt a chill that ran down his neck from his ear, the hiss of his name through his master's lips. Without sparing his brewing potion a single thought he had charged through the two guards and made for the dungeon cages. Being a man of many commitments as the Dark Lord's right hand man, it was simply a choice of which was the smaller consequence for Snape. He had decided that Dumbledore's alleged escape was more pressing than brewing a potion that could verify magical ancestry.

Snape's footsteps resounded fleetingly on the cold stone floor as he now quickly glided his way to the iron bars of the teachers' prison. They were sufficiently distanced from those of the students. His footstalls trailed off as he neared the cells, the damp floor muffling their impact. He stopped in front of a brown, rusty gate. Professor McGonagall was sitting on the floor rigidly and coldly like a propped doll with her hands cradled sombrely in her lap. Yet one wouldn't think her a prisoner from her poise if it weren't for the grime stains, the patina of dirt on her general person, and the tattered condition of her robes.

McGonagall's eyes flickered as Snape's appearance. She stared in attention but neither spoke nor moved.

"Minerva," said Snape, his eyes glittering darkly down at her.

"Severus," she said in her cool, clipped tone, her gaze just as sharp ever but ever so weary.

Some things never change, thought Snape, a shadow of a smirk on his lips. He glanced on either side of the passage.

"Could you explain the recent happening?" he asked.

McGonagall's lips compressed into thin white strips of flesh before she spoke.

"Dumbledore's familiar somehow managed to swoop into this chamber and, as soon as it landed on him, he was gone."

The other professors, Professor Sprout, Flitwick, Trelawney and Sinistra, nodded mutely. Snape couldn't help but notice how this common gesture made Professor Trelawney seemingly approximate normality. Merlin knew she had been anything but in their staff meetings. Her opinions in matters discussed there had been seldom prompted for a good reason, so not to endure through misty proclamations of the influences of stars on the pragmatic undertakings of the faculty.

Snape nodded. And then, his voice much lower, he asked, "Do you think he has gone to gather forces elsewhere?"

He wouldn't dare to have asked this question if he hadn't absolute faith in his Occlumency skills to withstand the Dark Lord's Legilimency. Snape knew what a normal Legilimens was capable of, a soft, breezing intrusion through the victim's mind, not falling to the floor and having his eyes roll into his head by the sheer force of it all. But that was how the Dark Lord operated.

McGonagall released a sigh she had been holding for Merlin knew how long.

"I'm tempted to believe so, yes, Severus, it is a possibility," she answered carefully and tiredly.

Snape nodded again and then examined her for a few moments before taking off in a flurry of black robes down the dingy corridor.

***

Voldemort relaxed at the High Table in the chair that used to seat that old coot Muggle-loving Dumbledore. He was enjoying his meal and sipping on some of the fine wine afforded by the Malfoy family from one of their villas' vineyards. It was excellent wine, he had to admit. Well, the Malfoys certainly did tend to excel in whatever venture they partook. It seemed to be in their nature.

Voldemort smiled to himself. Yes, he had secured the loyalty of one of the oldest and most influential pureblood families that the Wizarding world has ever known. And now he was the lord of the new era, his era. Every moment was as sweet as this wine.

But now, he thought with vague annoyance, the eldest Malfoy had been in a serious medical condition shortly after the beginning of his reign, possibly due to the heavy demands of being one of his closest disciples.

He watched on with his Death Eaters at the long middle table in front of them, as Dennis Creevey sodomized his older brother, who made sharp gasps muffled by Neville's penis in his mouth that he was sucking. So young, and so small... How old were the brothers anyway? Behind them, Dean Thomas was thrusting into Parvati Patil steadily.

The Slytherin house was eating their meal and having amicable chatter, which was quite far removed from the scene playing out only a table away from them. This was the only house that ate like it was any other normal year. The other houses were non-existent. Only one house reigned and would suffice to meet the whims of Voldemort. Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe, Goyle, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, and other Slytherins as well as some students from other houses, who had defected to the other side for their own safety shortly before the beginning of Voldemort's takeover, sat together, in some spheres along the table the silence strained, in others non-existent. To them, nothing had changed. They had remained loyal to the Dark Lord and that was the sole reason they were alive or not sold off to old men for reasons that needn't be imagined. And soon they would be inducted as Death Eaters, a high honour indeed. A high honour. Yes...

But the younger Malfoy was not present, Voldemort observed. Perhaps he was still at Malfoy Manor and attending to his father. Well, Voldemort thought, they better make him better quickly, he didn't want one of his most trusted and loyal followers to kick the bucket just yet. And besides, the world needed a Minister of Magic in order for things to run smoothly.

***

Draco Apparated directly in front of the gates of Hogwarts. He had just done the unthinkable coming back from the Manor. Father had grown sick, and there wasn't any sign of recovery after weeks of plummeting health. So his father had ordered for his own son to kill him. A Malfoy did not succumb to anything, he said, debilitating illnesses included. So in what he thought was true Malfoy fashion, Lucius Malfoy lay in his death bed and lifted his chin proudly, staring up at the piece of dark wood pointing down at him. He didn't spare a final glance at his wife sitting silently at the ornate couch a few metres away, staring into the breathtaking expense of the Manor through the window.

Lucius knew he would not get any better, that his sickness would only deteriorate his health until it would ultimately consume him. It was bearing this in mind that he had made the decision to die a proud death. He nodded once at his only son, his only heir, to take his life.

Draco nodded back at his father and willed away the tears that threatened to spill. He wouldn't show the disgrace of crying in front of his father while he was moments from leaving this world. He would give his father his strength as a parting gift, that he was strong and would not be reduced to tears and that he could finally cast an Unforgivable curse. No, he would look into those cold grey eyes that he had inherited and dutifully carry it out. A parting gift.

With a final bracing swallow, and one more deep look into those proud silver pools, Draco uttered the last words he would ever say to his father.

"Avada Kedavra."

Every stride through the oaken doors of Hogwarts was resolute and at full stretch. Draco entered, crossed the hallway, and traversed the length of the Great Hall. As usual, he saw the members of some other houses besides Slytherin involved in some perverted sexual act. His eyes swept over the Slytherin table and noted his fellow students - former students, he should say. He walked past them towards the High Table with a grace and fluency inherited from his father, who had died just a few minutes ago in a swooshing blaze of green glory.

"My Lord," Draco proclaimed, as soon as he reached the High Table, sparing no glance at the Death Eaters seated on either sides of the Dark Lord.

Voldemort gave Draco a dazzling smile in reply.

"Young Malfoy, how good of you to join us. I believe you're here to claim your prize--or prizes, I should say?"

Only in his most unguarded moments would Draco ever admit that the Dark Lord was striking. Ever since Harry Potter and other prominent supporters of the Light were subsequently captured, the Dark Lord had somehow gradually morphed from that pale flat face with red gleaming eyes to this gorgeous, timeless, young man with deceivingly soft hazel eyes, fresh young pale skin, wavy dark hair, hollow cheeks, and a prominent jaw line.

"Of course, My Lord," Draco said, lengthening his smirk.

"How's your father?" enquired Voldemort, his voice mellowing lightly, and a slight frown creasing his brown, all seemingly in genuine concern. But those hazel eyes remained depthless.

Draco swallowed hard. "He's passed away, My Lord. He chose for me to take his life rather than his illness to have the last word."

Voldemort raised an eyebrow, evidently impressed. "My, my. Yes, trust Lucius to do something like that. He was a fine man, Draco. I couldn't have asked for a better soldier." He bestowed upon Draco a small, proud smile.

Draco nodded in acknowledgement. "Thank you, My Lord."

"Well I guess I shouldn't keep you from your errand. I trust you're here to pick up your own?" Voldemort said with an indulgent lilt that usually spelt doom for most people.

"Yes, My Lord. I believe they were reserved for me? I can't say I won't enjoy this little arrangement."

Voldemort chuckled lightly at that, and he wagged a long finger as he chided, "Now, now, Draco, don't get overexcited. Of course I do expect that I will be granted access to one of them from time to time, correct?"

Draco wasn't fooled. It was neither a question nor a request. It was just a kind reminder.

"Of course, My Lord," he said, with a carefully executed bemused smile, making sure to sound affronted. He bowed before he turned on his heel and headed for the bowels of the castle.

He swiftly strode through the dank cells of the dungeons until he came to the one he was looking for, accompanied by a haggard, spent, but still robust-looking guard. Cloaked in dark gear, the figure nodded at him and slunk alongside him. Upon reaching the iron gate, the guard opened it for him, and he entered.

The guard took the three empty bowls and went away and locked the cell door. Malfoy stood staring at three dull pairs of eyes squinting up at him.

***

Malfoy stepped closer into the cell, his dark blue silk gloved hands clasped behind him, and looked down at the grime-smeared faces of his former schoolmates. His observation of them was brief; Harry conceded they were not exactly a pretty sight. Malfoy proceeded to take out his wand, an action which caused them to flinch backwards. Judging from the fact that Malfoy reacted in no way to this, Harry surmised he had extended to them the courtesy of ignoring their reflex. Meanwhile Malfoy Transfigured a spartan, metal chair.

Harry couldn't help thinking that if their visitor had been Dumbledore, he would have Transfigured a ridiculously big, plump, and bright coloured chintz chair. But he quickly strangled off that train of thought, for he knew it would do him no good. How he hoped Dumbledore was alive...

After dusting imaginary dirt off his pristine and plainly expensive robes, crossing his limbs, and taking in a deep breath, he faced them, three prisoners, squarely.

Malfoy opened his mouth to speak but paused. He took out his wand and waved towards the door. He then slid it back along his belt, faced them again.

"Mother and I have discussed this and decided it was for the best," he said without preamble. "I'm here to claim you as my slaves and take you to my home."

His announcement was with a flat tone that bore no sympathy, pity, nor condescension. It was stated as if it had already happened and only served to inform rather than negotiate.

This was expected by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. It was beyond mortifying to know you were to be enslaved by your former arch rival. But it didn't come as such as huge shock and indignation that it would have a little over two months ago. This place, their situation, had wreaked havoc on Harry's pride and now he found that he had little to react with to that declaration. His friends were no different.

If Malfoy was surprised at their quiet acceptance, by virtue of their silence, he didn't show it. He went on speaking.

"I needn't point out that this is the best you could have hoped for. Am I correct?"

Did Malfoy actually expect an answer? Were they obliged to respond? Was that an order?

Of course Malfoy was right. They had only each other now, and to begin to ponder on the possibility of being separated was too hard to bear. If they were broken, then the last of everything would be lost. Rather they face the mortification of being enslaved to Draco Malfoy together than be broken apart and individually owned by some pompous rich aristocrats, or worse, Death Eaters.

All three looked down at the floor at his words. They couldn't bring themselves to say yes. For a few moments, the only sounds that could be heard were that of dripping water and the faint bustle of the castle above.

Harry couldn't even look at his old schoolmate in the eye in that moment. It was humiliating. He should have seen this day coming. The Dark side had prevailed and the nose was doubtlessly the Malfoy family. But he should have gotten used to this idea a long time ago. What was more humiliating than being stripped naked and Cruciated in front of hundreds of laughing and jeering faces in the Great Hall?

Malfoy appeared to take the silence as confirmation. But then suddenly a dark emotion reared him slightly in his chair and narrowed his eyes on the raven-haired boy in front of him.

"I warned you, Potter, didn't I?" he hissed.

Harry looked up at the surprising words. He blinked at Malfoy.

"Remember? First year, on the train? I warned you this would happen, but then you..." Malfoy took a deep, slow breath. Harry imagined Malfoy was schooling himself severely for betraying emotion, even if it be anger. He stood up from his stool. "Shall we?" he then said, voice freshly detached, while gesturing at the gate.

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked up to Malfoy. This was actually happening. They were going to Malfoy's home with Draco Malfoy as their new master - Draco Malfoy, a boy no older than their own age, owning them. It only took the ponytail tied by a black silk ribbon to remind Harry of how close Malfoy approximated Lucius. The both of them, he thought, were vain and prissy. He and Ron and Hermione exchanged brief glances before they stood up wearily. The action offset places of their bodies they had forgotten they had. There were the sounds of cracking bones and whining muscle. The small of Harry's back screamed at the return of weight it was now forced to bear without warning; for so long they had not been on their feet. They followed Malfoy outside the gate.

The guard outside grunted at the sight of Malfoy and fashioned the other three a sneer. He slammed their cell door closed, took out his wand, and motioned for the three slaves to hold out their wrists. Harry, Ron and Hermione, all overwhelmed with the feeling of stepping onto what felt like new ground, new surroundings, new air, a new space, warily did so and felt a thin, cold, invisible binding force tying their wrists and ankles when the guard pointed his wand at them systematically. The guard then motioned for them to move and escorted them to the end of the passage.

Harry's pulse quickened at the prospect of seeing and feeling sunlight again on his parched, pale skin. It had been two months since he had been outside and now he couldn't wait to finally enjoy that simple pleasure again. Never again will he take for granted that small, seemingly inconsequential liberty.

The haggard-looking guard put a large hand in his cloak and pulled out three wands. He leered at the three of them as he handed them to Malfoy, the firmness with which he pressed them into Malfoy's palm indulgent. Malfoy subsequently tapped each of them with his own wand and muttered an incantation, making their wands disappear into thin air right in front of them. Even the guard seemed taken aback by this. Malfoy dismissed their incredulity and started ascending the stairs without a second look behind him, as if he didn't care if they followed or not. Harry, Ron and Hermione proceeded behind him, having not processed what had just occurred.

With less than half a mind Harry took in the relatively new sights he was exposed to: the different patterns on the floor, the better torchlight, all the nooks and crooks and alcoves, and the colder flagstone floor (back in the dungeons, it was warm and slightly moist). By large, his was attention was right in front of him, dispensed over thin air, all over the place. Their eyes were dulled and blackened. They stank much. They were dirtier than the rodents scurrying the dungeons, which the trio hadn't mustered enough courage to catch and eat raw - the rats were simply huge; Harry estimated their tails to be as long as his arm.

As the noise drew closer and grew louder, Harry didn't know how he would take to hearing them. Would there be any sound now anyway? They ascended the two sets of stairs and soon enough, the four approached the Great Hall. Harry felt a distant alarm upon finding that the sounds of the Great Hall were almost non-existent. What happened to those happy, cheerful, care-free laughs, giggles, chatter? Harry never thought he would one day miss the sound of giggling Hufflepuffs.

He saw Ron and Hermione crane their necks to peer and snatch a glimpse of the inside of the Great Hall. The sight left him with a poignant pang in their chest, which, however, did not lead to the point of feeling substantial surprise or disgust; everything was just mistier, vaguer. This served to cushion the effects of what reality would throw them. Now, they didn't react with overt incredulity, all wide-eyed. That wide-eyed look left the same day the cheer left Hogwarts. There was no remaining capacity for it. No bulging eyes, no gasps, no chokes, no more surprises. It was either accept or don't react at all - be numb. But still, the scene they had just witnessed, in a place where all positivity and happiness was most concentrated of all the world Harry knew, gave them the most to think about : it wasn't raining, it was pouring.

Stepping outside into bright daylight, Harry felt grateful for the stimulation his braining was relishing. After all of those months sitting in a dark, dank, four-by-four dungeon cell, it was refreshing for his eyes to receive the sight of new surroundings, meaning his brain was active and working, not sitting stagnantly in his head and growing atrophic with every recount of Ron's freckles.

The very different air he breathed now, that before it was infused with repugnant moisture from their body heat, exhalations, and the underground nature of the dungeon. Now it was a delightfully crisp, fresh, clean wonder. Harry wondered how Ron and Hermione were taking all this, and he turned to them and, for what seemed like ages, saw something different in their faces: the hesitation to smile. Smile. When last did they do that?

"Don't worry about your wands," Malfoy drawled, as soon as they were outside out of the castle and heading for the gate. "They're hidden away safely at Malfoy Manor; I cannot risk having you three somehow subdue me and claim them once again."

Harry's eyes fell upon Hagrid's cottage, which wasn't bellowing out smoke from its chimney. He wasn't there. Was he hiding? Or was the giant already slain? Harry added these questions into the mental reservoir isolated from his active attention, to where all those other many depressing thoughts tended to seep usually on their own accord.

It was definitely pouring.