Enslavement

Chapter 4

Capturing the Capture

"I almost thought she was nice for a moment," huffed Hermione angrily.

"And she could've at least looked us in the face when she said it," added Ron, incensed.

They were all sitting on Harry's four-post bed. The lunch they had eaten less than half an hour ago was already missed. Harry was busy twirling his broken glasses in his hands while his friends went on about the sudden change in attitude towards them from Malfoy's mother.

"She's Malfoy's mother; what were you guys expecting?" said Harry.

"But she was so gracious," argued Hermione, unable to believe Narcissa's nerve. "If it weren't for her Malfoy would have us walking around in our birthday suits!"

"Ooh I dare that sod would," threatened Ron, casting an overprotective glance at Hermione's general person, as though suspecting Malfoy indeed wanted them - particularly Hermione - walking around naked. "Tibby should get you another robe," suggested Ron, looking Hermione over critically. "This one is a bit too transparent."

"Bollocks. I can barely see through to--" began Harry, but dropped his words and looked the other way from Ron's warning secretive glare.

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Hermione. "He doesn't want anything to do with me."

"I never said he did," replied Ron, a little too quickly and squeakily.

"I'm a Mudblood, remember?"

"Don't call yourself that, Hermione!" Ron hissed. "Merlin, I swear I'm the only one who cares about your constant self-depreciation."

"Ha!" cackled Hermione suddenly, sitting up from her haunches. "Where were you when those portraits were looking at me funny? Did you even notice? You were in your own little place, staring at the pedestals and tiles and the artistry of the door knobs!"

"I didn't hear any of them say anything to you," argued Ron.

"Yes but they just about said it with their expressions," countered Hermione. "So don't walk up on a moral 'pedestal' and try and make yourself all-caring - you're not Dumbledore..." And she reached the point of no return.

Thirty minutes later Ron still couldn't stem the tide of tears.

"What if he's dead?" sobbed Hermione in Ron's shoulder. She wiped her nose with her robe and left a disgusting smear of snot on her cheek. Harry thought it almost rude to leave it there.

"Don't say things like that, 'Mione," soothed Ron, rubbing her back.

"Yeah. Please don't say things like that," said Harry quietly. It wasn't his soft voice that curbed Hermione's sniffs and tears - it was the fact that Harry said it.

After a moment she said, "I'm sorry, Harry. I know how much you--"

"Please don't start with that," moaned Harry. "I just--We have a normal relationship, like student and teacher."

Hermione didn't respond to this, and her silence was louder in blaring her scepticism at his statement than anything she would have said. Even so, Harry didn't like the look she and Ron just shared.

"I don't think he's my grandfather or something!" he abjured. He had been reclining against his continental pillow but now he sat upright on his knees.

Hermione swallowed and Ron looked at his duvet.

Harry folded his arms and looked the other way. After a minute of silence, he said, "I just want to hear he's still alive."

"Us too, Harry," replied Hermione softly.

He barely escaped his grief when he fought with his throat to swallow - as though trying to catch a breath on top of another one like a flight of stairs with falling steps, such was how consuming his grief was - when, to try to relieve it, and with some hesitation, he said, "It was Snape."

His hesitation was justified when Ron and Hermione lost all sombreness from their faces on account of their previous note as they broke into sighs of exasperation which seemed to have come from deep inside them.

"I'm telling you, he sold us out," Harry maintained, over Ron's and Hermione's exhausted mutters and shaking of their heads. "Who else could've blown our cover?"

"I'm just not going through this with you again," Ron told Harry levelly.

"I will off you myself personally if I hear that one more time from you," swore Hermione, a hand to her forehead. "Bugger the myth of the Chosen One."

Yes it had been a surprise when Ron finally decided to side with Hermione after Harry had badgered them for weeks and weeks about the veracity of his suspicions about Snape's involvement in their defeat. Harry indeed had felt most betrayed. If it just weren't for Hermione's stunning argument... They had made a debating conference of it; they had to be creative when they had been facing colourless time stretched out uncertainly in front of them.

"What should be worrying you instead of doubts about Snape's real allegiance which I've already disproved are the collars we're going to be wearing tomorrow," Hermione pointed out venomously.

Harry loathed the satisfaction that seeped from her mouth when she said "disproved". But her words had undeniably given him a disconcerting notion to think about. And he simply didn't feel like doing that. Simultaneously their hands came up to their necks and rubbed them anxiously.

"Smother our magic," murmured Ron. "Should've just done it then and landed one right in that concave little head of his. He enjoyed telling us that."

Every time this issue surfaced, Harry's heart would suddenly race.

"Malfoy said our wands are hidden somewhere in this house," Harry recalled, stilling caressing his neck. "We have to find them. There has to be a day when both of them are not here." Harry had no idea why the idea of having his magic stifled was even more frightening than that of losing his actual life. Ron was a pureblood but Harry was sure he didn't feel this terrified. Not this terror he felt. "But fuck, there's Tibby," he hissed, before he swallowed, his eyes brimming with the sunlight pouring into the room.

Ron seemed to try hard not to look at Harry. "She's never around unless she's summoned though, is she?"

"She might regularly do her rounds around the manor," Harry suggested. "You know, just check on things every now and then here and there, like a conductor."

"Wha--? Oh like those blokes trolling around the Express?" said Ron. "But shouldn't she be relegated to the kitchen or something? She's a bloody house-elf - can't have different duties to the ones of the elves in Hogwarts."

"I mean, if we had our wands--at least--even with our magic smothered..." Harry buried himself in his mire of thoughts.

"They would be totally useless," sighed Hermione. "Little better than twigs in our hands."

"But we'll still have them," contended Harry. He turned to Ron and Hermione, who looked at him plainly trying hard to believe what he was trying to say without words, that their wands' physical feel and presence in their hands was still something. Something of a starting point, even. It was better than no wand at all.

"But don't you think they'll notice if they're missing?" Hermione asked delicately.

"And we'll probably never find them. I mean look at this place." Ron spread out his arms as he gazed around Harry's huge room, a microcosm of the suddenly insurmountable immensity of the manor. Just the distance between the door and his bed said enough for Harry. They would never find their wands.

"Yeah," Harry replied shortly. He suddenly felt like a drama queen, like he was overreacting about everything: first about Dumbledore, then his wand. He felt an ugly mixture of shame at his conceitedness and selfishness. It took a great deal to swallow it, like a vile cough syrup.

"Let's look on the bright side," said Ron. "We'll be eating real food three times a day. How often can you say that these days?"

Harry resumed his reclining position on top of his continental pillow and picking at his glasses.

"You should ask Malfoy's mother to repair those for you," advised Hermione.

"'Cos the ferret's mother has that much better a heart than her son does," drawled Ron, rolling his eyes. "Wouldn't be sure about that after she showed her true colours just now: dragon lady. If anything, she's worse than Malfoy; Malfoy had to have inherited his ferrety-ness from somewhere, right?"

"I would bet he'd have inherited more from Lucius Malfoy," argued Hermione darkly, undoubtedly remembering the beginning of second year.

"Blimey! Yeah, where the bloody hell is Lucius?" cried Ron in astonishment. "Can't believe I forgot about him! That bastard must be right by You-Know-Who's side sniffing his arse while he's killing people off."

"Well I think we can assume we're safer so long as he's still out there and not here," observed Hermione. "Of course that won't be forever." She had a slightly proud look about her, but she also appeared slightly fearful.

"You know," said Harry, shifting slightly, "I would've thought Malfoy would be out there with his father and his mates learning to become one of them."

"I would think not," said a voice not among them. They jumped a foot in the bed as their eyes darted to the door. "He's dead."

Malfoy was framed by the door, looking suddenly taller in it and with his feet close together, his white-blond hair brushed entirely onto his back and thus accentuating his pointy profile, a wand in his hand.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, piled up onto each other, gazed at him as he slowly entered the room, closed the door most alarmingly, and approached the edge of the bed. He stopped some inches from it and folded his arms, his wand still fisted in his hand and pointing at the ceiling like an ominous gesture of warning of a finger.

"I imagine the Dark Lord would find it incredibly amusing you think my father's face would be in his rear on their missions."

It took several seconds for Harry to find his voice. "Yeah you would, considering you have like minds."

"I'm tempted to take that as a compliment," said Malfoy.

"Don't," replied Harry. Ron and Hermione shifted off him and he sat up.

The wand pointing at the ceiling in the crook of Draco's elbow twitched.

"You don't scare us, Malfoy," Harry told him.

"I doubt I do," agreed Malfoy. "But you shouldn't be too fast in assuming my father's extracurricular activities. He was growing more and more ill with the passing days, you see. He simply wouldn't have it. But he didn't even have strength left to take his own life. For the first time he looked up at me from way down there on his deathbed. I guarantee you it wasn't a natural passing."

He and Harry stared hard into each other for a long time. But Harry finally fell into the temptation of glancing at the wand in Malfoy's hand again. It had performed murder...

"Let me never see you three together in one room again. Be ready by nine tomorrow morning." Malfoy turned on his heel and swept out of the room.

"Don't we get a tour of the house?" said Harry.

In feeble defiance Harry made Ron and Hermione stay a little longer in his room in case Malfoy came back to check on them. But eventually the daring factor wore out and Ron and Hermione did leave, so they spent the rest of the afternoon in their separate rooms.

There was nothing to entertain him save for watching the sunset through his tall window. After ten minutes of this, the book shelf behind him was starting to look more interesting. In spite of himself, and after holding the two pieces of his glasses with the string of his robe, Harry finally went over and briefly went through the books, finding them no less repulsive than Hermione had. Unfortunately this only bit out an hour of his very long day. He left the book stand and went over to the escritoire and pulled at the drawers, pushing stuff around until he extracted a stunning metallic eagle quill and a pad of parchment. Its cover read XeroPyrus by Xander, Your Leading Manufacturer of the World's Safest Parchment (Suitable for bloody transactions).

It registered how sad his existence was then when he had to resort to entertaining himself by drawing on parchment. But he thought perhaps if he were to hold onto his sanity, he could do this by keeping track of his thoughts. So he finally resolved himself and moved onto the worry of what he was going to do on the parchment. Some few minutes later he abandoned his drawings of Snitches and the many Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers they have had and wrote "Day 1".

Even before dinner his pride had long surmounted the mortification of writing a diary. By seven o'clock he had poured his heart and mind out on seventy-two inches of parchment. This was interspersed with regular visits to the bathroom, careful perusal of what were proving to be Dark-themed books (again in spite of himself), and lengthy spells of staring up at his canopy on his bed. At this he surprisingly found his mind at its most creative yet. Then he would return to the escritoire and jot down his ideas. Perhaps he should zone out more often.

And often his mind would fall back to the time before they were captured, and Dumbledore would hold nightlong Order meetings, and Mrs Weasley was seldom there to bar him or Ron or Hermione from attending them. He recalled the endless planning and endless sheets of building plans and terrain maps; the desperate quiet that would suddenly fall and the thrill that would follow when someone shared a nugget of knowledge, of something they all hadn't considered, or something new he had found out on his assignment. Or the anxious wait for someone you hope would return from their assignment, and the hope that they had new information.

But just being in Dumbledore's presence and letting his deep voice wash over him in a soothing spray like a buttery warmness rich with the promise of safety and certainty, was for most of the time enough for Harry and all he needed. He would pretend he was asleep whenever he heard the stairs beyond his and Ron's room creak louder and louder until the door whined open and with the thin slice of light from the door he peeked at a handsome, waist-length beard shining and the glint of half-moon spectacles, behind which bright blue eyes watched him to confirm to their owner that he, Harry, was all right. And he would sleep so much better.

By that time Harry only seldom attended his classes. Had he had his way he would not have attended any. But Dumbledore had come to Mrs Weasley's aid and reasoned it would look suspicious if Harry Potter suddenly dropped out of school. Explaining his intermittent absences from class as sickness was already pushing it.

Voldemort had grown more furious and paranoid with the passing months. Furious because they were foiling his plans of murder and destruction at every turn, and paranoid that someone close to him was leaking information to Dumbledore, revealing where they would strike next to have the Order suddenly turn up. Naturally, the weeks to follow were hard on Snape, who had had to endure the suspicions of his colleagues and the long spells of torture from his master. Fortunately Snape's will power was impossibly immense and his Occlumency skills unmatched, and so Voldemort finally believed he wasn't the informant.

They had surmised Voldemort had had enough with defeat the moment they received word that he, not sated with targeting random Muggle suburbs, was coming straight for Hogwarts only minutes before he was to land. The warning came from a Patronus the shape of a silver doe. That day happened to be one of the few on which Harry was at Hogwarts. And it was the day Harry felt his first stab of irony: of all the places where they could have captured them it was Hogwarts, said by Hagrid to be the safest place in the world, except for Gringotts of course.

The Great Hall rung with the low nasal twang of Snape's voice: "They are coming."

The Patronus had just flown from the ceiling in candlelight, floated over onto the High Table, in the middle where Dumbledore sat with his fork and knife still in his hands and his beard tossed over his shoulder. The seat right next to him, Snape's, was empty. Dumbledore stopped chewing. Harry stared at him from the Gryffindor table along with Ron and Hermione and the rest of the Great Hall. The Patronus then swirled and folded into nothingness. Dumbledore stared through the fading swirls of mist, hands still in the air, at the massive oaken doors. He swallowed, stood up, placed his hands on the table, and looked solemnly down at the students.

"This will proceed in an orderly fashion: the professors will lead their Houses to their offices. There they will allow each student to use their fireplaces to Floo back home. If you have friends who live in the Muggle world, please take them with you and explain the course of events to your parents. Do not attempt to return to your dormitories for your belongings. In absence of your Head of House, Slytherin will follow Professor Sprout along with Gryffindor. Professors, if you'll rise. We don't have much time."

Professor McGonagall, Sprout, and Flitwick, rushed to their House tables and beckoned at them.

"Gryffindor, this way!" called McGonagall. "Come on, Potter, move it!" she screamed, worry deepening the lines on her face. As though fighting the temptation to grab him by the scruff of his neck she did so to the Creevey brothers and marched to the doors.

Sprout wobbled fast down the table of her House, leading it towards the door. Flitwick's wand was sending red shower sparks in the air to indicate his whereabouts to his House since he barely reached the knees of his shortest charge.

"Professor!" Harry yelled at Dumbledore, going in the opposite direction of where McGonagall wanted him.

"Potter!" she shouted, craning her neck over the students being shepherded to the door. She noted the reluctance of her House to move quickly as they watched Harry heading over to Dumbledore. "This way, students!" she shouted.

"Professor, is Voldemort coming here?" Harry asked.

"Yes. Harry, please go with your House," said Dumbledore. Professor Moody, who had returned to teach fifth-years, and Hagrid were at his side.

"But we can fight with you, sir," said Harry, indicating at the Gryffindors watching them, who reached for their wands.

Far from heartened, this visibly angered Dumbledore.

"Gryffindor!" shouted McGonagall. "I have never seen this! You will come with me to my office this instant!"

"Harry, take your fellow Housemates down to Professor McGonagall's office. I do not want to see you doing nothing else but that. I have to summon the Order." And he turned his back on him, beckoning urgently at Moody and Hagrid as he headed for the door behind the High Table.

"This is no time for your heroics, Potter. Listen to your Head of House," growled Moody, patting him before going with Dumbledore and Hagrid.

"But, Professor!" Harry yelled at Dumbledore. "I'm part of the Order!"

"POTTER! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!"

They disappeared behind the door.

Harry turned and ran over to his House. McGonagall grabbed him by the ear and pulled forward. Despite Dumbledore's words it was a mad scramble at the door as every Professor wanted to get their House as quickly as possible out of the Great Hall. And the fact that it was night did not help. The darkened corridors bulged with the sound of a hundred footfalls and mutters of panic. Harry, Ron, and Hermione struggled to keep hold of each others' hands in the moving throng of students. Their saving grace was that the warning had come at dinner time. Had it been during class in the day, while everyone was scattered across the castle, it would have been disastrous.

"Inside, everybody," instructed McGonagall, after rushing through the door of her classroom and heading for the office joint to it. She was followed by the drone of chairs and tables being pushed aside and the patter of school shoes. The whole of Gryffindor House was larger than her office and classroom combined; hence a good portion of students hung outside in the badly lit corridor, perhaps the most frightened of them all.

After they reached her fireplace, McGonagall grabbed the closest student to her. Harry felt the small hand around his belt fist into a ball. He looked down behind him at Colin Creevey holding hands with his brother Dennis. Harry gave them a smile.

"Do you know where you live?" McGonagall was asking the student, practically shaking the student.

"Prestwick, Professor!" squeaked the student, holding onto her wrists.

"Prestwick where!" shouted McGonagall. "Do you know your street address?"

"Yes, professor."

"Where're your friends? Is one of them Muggle-born?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then take this--" She threw Floo powder into his hand. "--and say your address loudly and clearly and throw the Floo powder in here. If your home doesn't have a fireplace hope your neighbours do. In you go."

The student shuffled into the fireplace, squeezed his eyes shut at the hundreds of faces staring at him, and yelled, "57 Boydfield Avenue, Prestwick!" He threw the Floo powder down and a surge of green fire engulfed him. When they receded to the logs below he was gone.

"Next!" yelled McGonagall.

Harry had seen at that moment that they were not going to go through the rest of the students quickly enough. After reaching the limit of her patience with the first-years, who were so shaken that half of them couldn't recall the streets on which they lived - and some of them genuinely didn't know - McGonagall had moved onto the slightly older students. Hence it had been no surprise why the owner of the hand holding onto his belt had been left behind along with his brother and the majority of Gryffindor House, and the school. Shortly after, Voldemort had touched down.

Harry stabbed the parchment and left a period at the end of his sentence. He only realized after looking around his room that it was awash not in natural light but light from the chandelier hanging above his bed. He stretched against the back of his chair, yawned, and over his shoulder peered at the clock: two minutes past seven. Mid-yawn, Harry jerked in his chair and nearly clattered with it to the floor (he did achieve upsetting his glasses and making them uneven; he left them behind lest they were found out, thinking them something of a secret that he still had them after all that time). He stood up swiftly and rushed out of his room.

He knocked on Ron's door.

"Ron!"

He heard a few hissed swearwords, a scraping chair, nearing footfalls, and then the door swung open.

Ron rolled out of his room and asked, "Bloody hell. Isn't Tibby supposed to tell us it's time for dinner?"

"I thought so too," replied Harry. They went over to Hermione's room and knocked.

"Be honest. What were you doing?" Harry asked him, hiding a smirk.

Ron looked between him and the door handle. "Nothing much. I thought I might--you know--pass the time drawing."

"I knew it," said Harry, quite certain Ron had done anything but draw.

"And you?" Ron asked, a little worriedly.

"Same," Harry replied, just before the door gave way to Hermione.

"We're late!" she whispered fretfully. She snapped the door closed and they hurried down the corridor and hoped they remembered the path to the dining room.

It was a quieter affair than the one of lunch hours ago. This time Tibby knew exactly what slaves were fit to be offered, and that did not include wine. Breakfast the next day, however, had just one change.

"You'll have to eat on the floor with your hands as normal slaves - we have a guest this morning."

Harry couldn't decide which was colder, those words or her pale-blue eyes.

Malfoy's mother stared at them expectantly from the other side of the table, her son next to her. Harry was glad there wasn't a smirk of pleasure on his face; otherwise he didn't know what he would do.

"On the floor," ordered Malfoy, watching them.

They did so without protest.

Tibby appeared and served them breakfast. Harry almost regretted not using the forks and knives they were given yesterday at lunch, for they were now back to using their hands just as they had in their little prison inside Hogwarts. They were forced to listen to the clinks of cutlery as Malfoy and his mother ate with utensils on the other side of them room. They might not have minded this too much, but eating on the floor while others ate on chairs twelve chairs away was simply humiliating.

They ate quietly. Before Harry could finish licking his little finger he felt a vibration deep in his stomach. He looked at his friends, who looked back at him wonderingly.

"That will be our guest," they heard, before a chair was tucked in and heels clicked on the floor. Malfoy's mother went past them and out of the room. A few minutes later they heard voices coming nearer.

"Severus. We're glad you could join us," Narcissa was saying.

The two walked into the room. Snape stopped short of them and looked down the length of his hooked nose at them.

"It's my pleasure, Narcissa," he replied. He looked them over and out of the folds of his dark robes produced three bejewelled collars.

Harry bet it was his pleasure.