Sam I Am

Sam I Am
Part One

Harry curls up in his cell and doesn't cry. He is inured and desensitised and disengaged. He doesn't care that he's been in this cell longer than he cares to remember. He doesn't.

The cell is in the dungeons of Voldemort's Manor, buried somewhere in the bowels of London, but Harry does not care.

He's vaguely amused by the name. This place is like no manor Harry knows, with its dark and smooth stone walls, impossibly sprawled across a single level—aside from the dungeons, of course. Manors are places for sweeping staircases and servants, but this Manor has no banisters and no servants that Harry knows of other than the house itself.

That is perhaps the most frightening thing. The house lives. The rooms wander, he remembers—just like Hogwarts, but there is no sense of familiarity, no trust. The Manor's rooms do not move for fun.

Sometimes he thinks he can feel the house watching him, the prickling sense of being regarded from behind settling on the nape of his neck even when he pushes his body back into the corner of the cell.

He curls in his cell, rolled into the foetal position, presenting delicate naked vertebrae to the door, a string of knobs that ladder his back in bleak contrast with the slashed cicatrices.

"Guest, Potter," somebody says, and he looks up, puzzled, as they shove someone in. She collapses to the floor, as naked as he is, and then looks up at him, a violent red scar along her cheek visible through the dark curtain of her hair.

He scratches the hair on the back of his fingers and on his cheeks. She is shrieking again, shrieking at him and the world and the cell and her master for hate, forgiveness, mercy, kindness, anything but this cell. His chin itches dreadfully under the wiry growth of his beard. It is so strange.

She howls at him sometimes, scolding him for his impertinence; how he flaunts his tainted blood, that whore's eyes in his face, and other times he fights her off weakly as she tries desperately to put his mocking, mocking eyes out, her thumbs stretching for his sockets, the nails sharp and dangerous.

She sits quietly in the corner, her long hair wrapped around her naked body like a cloak, her posture still regal even as she mutters to herself and traces designs along her arms with her fingers.

He used to think of her as a bomb, explosive and violent.

Bloody. Red smeared across her face, red in the rims of her eyes, red flying from her wand and striking his... He doesn't want to think about it. It was long ago, back when he was free—freer than he is, at least—before anything that's relevant now.

She screamed at him, once.

She doesn't scream anymore. She doesn't say anything anymore.

Her pale hands flutter across his skin, down his sides and across his arse. They're dry, papery, weak, and so translucent he can see the veins beneath. The knuckles bulge out from the stick-like fingers like tumorous growths.

Harry's skin is still opaque, but he's the one that's vulnerable.

And she has the power.

The Dark Lord says they deserve each other, he and Bellatrix. Harry still doesn't know what she did. He asked once, and he discovered then just how much strength she still had left.

And how much he had lost.

She coos. Gentle, quiet, meaningless sounds that wrap around him like silk ropes, trying to tug him open. They hang heavily in the air, innocent counterparts to Bellatrix's sneaking digits.

Her hands slide everywhere, finding the places she knows he hates so very much because they are the key to him that she exploits so heartlessly. She makes him so weak when she does this, coaxing him out and making him whimper.

Her hand burrows in, finding him carefully and gripping him. She pulls at him, slowly and carefully, still cooing. He buries his face in his arm, blushing and furious and so powerless. The stone of the floor hurts where it digs into his shoulder, but it is just one ache amongst many.

All undesirable. All of them.

He drags his tongue between his unclean teeth, distracted by the sensation of the rough flesh scraping against enamel that is coated in something foul. Bellatrix leans forward slightly, eagerly even. One of her breasts brushes against his arm, heavy, sagging and chilled, and he flinches away by instinct.

The coos become reproachful as she strokes him harder and his breath is coming short now and he is betraying himself, groaning before he thinks to bite his tongue. He slumps against her for a moment before pushing her away.

The cell is tiny, but Harry doesn't mind. Doesn't care. Doesn't notice. He's inured. He's used to these small dark places, whatever claustrophobia he might once have had long left behind.

Bellatrix is less accustomed. She paces their space incessantly, not hesitating to step on Harry if he gets in her way. He tries to close his eyes and ignore her, wondering what the world is like outside.

He wonders where Ron and Hermione are, and if Draco's safe. They could be in the cell next door.

There might not be a cell next door.

He deplores his lack of knowledge. It eats away at him, a little worm in his gut that gnaws and gnaws. He has spent the whole of his life not knowing.

He hates it.

He hates this place. He hates her, and the cell, and the little scratch marks on the floor that were there when he came in.

He hates that Voldemort has forgotten him, forgotten the prophecy. They are supposed to kill. Not to languish.

He can't remember when they took away his clothes. Was it at the start? Later, when they shoved Bellatrix in with him, wide-eyed and murderous?

Bellatrix snarls at the wall, flinging out a hand to slap against it with a crack! that rings loudly in the enclosed cell. Harry stares at her with one eye, trying to divine whether she's about to go on another rampage or not.

Or not, it would appear.

His fingernails are long and dirty. He stares at them morosely, dragging one across the hardened sole of his foot. He considers Bellatrix's, which are still surprisingly neat given that she has been here almost as long as him.

She smacks the walls again, with her other hand, and Harry realises that this is the difference: she uses her hands still, clawing at the walls and the door and Harry.

Harry has long since given up on finding his way out. He wonders maybe if Voldemort expected them to tear each other apart, like the ravening dogs Harry suspects they are. He wanted to kill Bellatrix, tried to when she first appeared in his cell—his cell. He remembers leaning on her, panting and feral and red in the face, pushing his fingers down into her aristocratic neck and curling them around the outline of her windpipe. She had kneed him in the balls even as she tore at his back until her fingers came away slick and crimson.

Later, he tried smothering her, the same animalistic position: him on her, one hand pressed over her snarling mouth and Roman nose, the other clutching frail wrists together as she twisted and snarled, biting furrows into the meat of his thumb.

He can't remember how she survived that encounter, how he survived. Holes. Holes: all these little holes in his memory picking and tearing away until it resembles nothing so much as a moth-eaten sheet. The forgotten things nag at him, springing too the fore of his mind at random intervals. That girl, that DA member who betrayed them to Umbridge; what was her name?

He should know these things.

He should, should should should but he doesn't and it drives him insane.

He scratches at his scalp, long lank hair giving way to skeletal fingers and he wonders if his hair looks like Snape's now.

No matter. He isn't ever going to get out of this cell. He's going to moulder here to the end of his days with this rank murderess whose grip on sanity and humanity is even more tenuous than his own.

Where is the light in the cell coming from? There are no windows, no bulbs, no candles or torches, but the room is constantly, harshly lit. He thinks of it as fluorescent, but that's wrong. It is warm, not cold, and so frighteningly silent.

The stretching quiet disturbs him. He leans back against the wall harder, glad for the infinitesimal sound of his skin against the smooth stone. Bellatrix is so disturbingly quiet as she chews at the inside of her cheek.

He has changed his mind. The quiet was peaceful, really. It gave him space to think, space to breathe and remember who he is. He is Harry Potter, the Boy Who.

He is. Sam I am, he thinks, and cannot remember where that came from. A Muggle said it, and his head snaps up, looking for the stranger in his cell before he realises that a Muggle said it quite some time ago.

No Muggles in the cell.

No Muggles in this cell.

The noise is wrong. It seems to filter in from everywhere at once. He lifts his hands to his ears, and is startled to realise that they are exuding sound as well, shouts and bangs that mirror the ones outside. He pulls them away, stares at them hard, and they shake a little under his scrutiny.

My hands are making noises, he thinks, and grins.

He hates the quiet. It is deep and sucking, vacuuming away his soul fraction by fraction like a Dementor. Bellatrix is playing with her hair, pulling it this way and that, curling it on top of her head and then sweeping it over her shoulders. Her mouth works but no sound comes out. Saliva slips past her lips, trickling on to her chin and sprinkling on the floor.

The door opens and he stares at it balefully, waiting for the food to come floating in like it always does. It is no good trying to escape; the door seems to provide only a rudimentary security to back up the powerful charms that remain in place even when the door is open. He licks his cracked lips, his hands shifting to rest on his belly where it bulges out grotesquely, like a giant water balloon dangling from his lower spine.

The yells don't stop. Bellatrix moans softly at a loud shout, her face hidden behind the fall of her hair.

They eat the cheese and bread slowly, not looking at each other.

The door opens again and they both stare. Harry shoves the last piece of cheese into his mouth, barely chewing before he swallows and it burns his throat as he forces it down. There's a man—a Death Eater—in the doorway, wrapped in black and hidden by those frightening white masks.

"Potter," he says, gesturing imperiously, and Harry staggers upright, scrabbling at the stone wall to lever himself up. His legs are weak, unused, and he totters slightly as he walks to the door. Bellatrix gapes at him from where she is slumped across the floor. Her gaze flicks to the door, and then back to him.

The Death Eaters gestures again—come hither—and Harry steps forward nervously, steps into the wards and feels them wrap him up and let him through. Suddenly Bellatrix is up and running, throwing herself at the wards, shrieking and cursing and Harry can't tell whether she started when the wards caught her or before. He watches dispassionately as the wards strike at her body, endless strikes that show only as red weals on her dry skin, until she manages to struggle free, pushing herself back into the cell.

Harry is not at all disturbed that her eyes never stopped staring at him.

The Death Eater is already turning; one hand pulling the door shut as the other waves a wand. "Imperio," he mutters, and then there is a voice in his head and a weight against his back, pushing him forwards. Follow me, Potter. Harry doesn't try to fight, can't remember how to. He stumbles forward. The floor is cool under his feet, worn smooth, and his straw-like try desperately to remember how to walk, hobbling along smartly to keep up with his escort.

The hallways pass without notice. The Death Eater leads the way, not bothering to check that Harry is following, but a gentle pressure weighs on his mind. Harry's escort stomps up the stairs when the come to them, and then stomps back down again to Harry, who is standing on the second step, clutching tightly at the handrail, trying desperately to pull himself up to the next step.

Here, thinks the Death Eater in Harry's mind, grabbing at his elbow. Harry lets go of the rail, puts his weight on the Death Eater: too much. They both stagger and topple, the Death Eater first and Harry on top of him. The gruesome mask tears away and Harry finds himself staring at a familiar face, brown eyes and dark hair and plebeian sallow skin.

"Nott?" he croaks, and flinches at the unfamiliar sound of his voice. "Theodore Nott?" Nott pushes him up and away, and he slides away, landing back on the dungeon floor, rattled. The mask returns to its proper place, moulding itself to the face and Harry flinches again as it frowns down at him. Why didn't he notice that it is cold down here before? He shivers, and again, and it becomes uncontrollable.

"Mobilicorpus," Nott snarls. Harry struggles weakly as he begins to float, his naked limbs waving uselessly in the air. Nott flicks his wand and Harry begins to move, floating up the stairs as Nott follows behind him. Somewhere down deep his is ashamed of being naked in front of a boy he went to school with, but mostly he is interested in the ceiling: white tiles like the floor of a hospital stretching in long rows to the walls. He cranes his neck to see where he is going, and all the blood is in his head as he levitates up the stairs feet first.

Harry hums to himself vaguely as they proceed along the main floor of the Manor, inventing the tune as he goes. Nott coughs once, briefly, a tiny spasm, and then is quiet again as he conducts Harry along the halls. He thinks maybe that they double back; he can't be sure.

Can't be sure of anything except I am.

Sam I am.

Where had that come from? That was a line from a Muggle book, he is sure. It's been a long time since he read any Muggle books. A long since he read anything, really, stuck in his cell with Bellatrix and is that a person slumped on the floor ahead of them?

It is. A Death Eater, in black robes and mask, slumped on his side and not moving at all. No breath; nothing. Harry rolls his head back to peer at Nott behind him, and grins. Nott doesn't look down, doesn't even acknowledge the body of his colleague.

Suddenly Harry is upright, his feet on the floor and Nott's gloved hand pressing into the small of his back, dragonskin against humanskin. Nott pushes him through a doorway and into a chamber, large but unadorned, and oh!

More bodies. More Death Eaters, perhaps a dozen of them, all dead as doorknobs and Harry grins cruelly even as he walks amongst them. His steps are more confident now, feet slapping quietly against more stone, endless stone. Nott pushes him forward even when there's a body in their path, and Harry's grin falters as he plants one foot firmly on the Death Eater's stomach, feeling it give under his foot and he struggles to keep his balance as the air whooshes out of the Death Eater's lungs, gargling and croaking in the throat.

Harry knows where they are going now: a plain armchair on the far side of the room. Another body is slumped in it, and he realises who is in it as his scar begins to throb in earnest, not the endless twitches and twinges that frightened Bellatrix. The grin picks up again. His enemy is not dead, surely, but he is ever so close to it.

And Harry didn't even have to do anything. Suddenly Nott's hand isn't at his back, and he relaxes a little before Nott hooks a leg around Harry's knees and sends him flying, landing prostrate and he shakes his head to clear it, watching as Nott stalks past him to approach the chair.

"Nott?" the chair says. Harry winces as his scar flares. Pride care pain. "Where are they?" This time Harry hears how subdued the voice is, neither malice nor vigour present. The words rasp in Voldemort's throat and Harry is reminded of how the breath rattled out of that Death Eater's corpse.

Nott bends close to the chair, his own voice just as low and hushed but somehow louder, as loud as a scream. "They are fighting... elsewhere," Nott whispers. "My lord, they think you're dead." The last word is an accusatory hiss. Voldemort's head turns and Harry can see his face now. It is so very pale, paler even than he remembers, and the red eyes do not burn or glow but maybe slow, like banked coals. "I've brought Potter, my Lord."

Voldemort's neck cranes, seeking him out, and Potter glares up at him, just able to find a modicum of defiance for the man who has reduced him to whatever he might be called now.

Come here, Nott's voice echoes in Harry's head and Harry wishes that he could remember how to fight it. He learnt once, he knows he did. He learnt from Moody how not to obey, but he can't remember it and he crawls forward, knobbly knees scraping against the floor.

"Potter," says Voldemort, a thin layer of command floating on top of the voice now. "Come here, Potter, and I will kill you and then I will have won. Can't defeat me then, can they, Nott? Can't use me and betray my trust, foul filthy traitors."

"No, master."

Harry backpedals desperately, back back back but his limbs move forward against his own command. Don't want to, don't want to. Don't want to die; fight it. He pushes then with all of his strength, not with his arms and legs but with his mind, pushing against Nott until something snaps and he goes backwards suddenly, his legs his own again.

"Potter!" snaps Voldemort, a wand in his hand now. Harry raises himself with all speed until he is standing, standing tall over the slumped man. Swish and flick and "Avada Kedavra." Green light flashes and Harry's scar sears, burns so Harry feels like it is going to burn through his flesh and bone and brain. He yells, the sound too loud in the chamber, too loud in Harry's ears. Nott flinches back and Harry's legs quiver but he's not dead.

The light subsides and Harry's still not dead, although his ears are ringing and there are brilliant white spots in front of his eyes that do not go away when he blinks. Voldemort sinks back into the chair and the breath rattles out of him and it's the same. Everything is the same: the rattle and Voldemort trying to kill him and failing; but it's not the same because Voldemort is gone and Harry's head aches so much.

Nott leans over his master as Harry lurches back. "Potter!" he yells, and Harry turns and runs as fast as he can. "You've killed him!" Nott yells after him. "Potter, come back here. Potter!" Harry runs, skirting around the bodies and his head feels like it's going to come apart but he's still running. "Imperio!" But Harry shakes his head, shakes his mind and it slips free of Nott's grasp. He clambers over a Death Eater and through the door he goes.