snarrymod (snarrymod) wrote in snarry_games, @ 2007-04-22 23:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | imogenedisease, submissions, team wartime |
TEAM WARTIME ENTRY: ImogeneDisease "The Remaining"
Original poster: snarrymod
Title: The Remaining
Author: imogenedisease
Team: Wartime
Genre(s): Angst, Horror
Prompt: P.O.W. (Prisoner of War)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Drag mouse over space if you wish to know: * Torture, minor character death. *
Word Count: 2,650
Summary: If this is what triumph feels like, Harry wants more, wants all of it, scores of cracked, useless men that can no longer scare him.
Harry’s life is going how he should have always expected it to go. They’re fighting a war. It didn’t surprise anyone who knew of wizarding politics beyond what the Daily Prophet offered, though to the public, it was a shock. But shock can quickly fade to apathy, or near enough. Life’s almost normal for the average citizen. Almost, but not quite.
There’s an unsteady stalemate. The dark and the light, Death Eaters and Order, whatever people call them in the paper, they’re both a little stuck. They’ve split into camps. The Death Eaters don’t know where the Order are situated, and vice versa. For months, the only battles have been small skirmishes between scouting parties.
It would suit everyone well enough, but muggles keep dying, and some Order members have learned to kill most Death Eaters on sight. Something has to change, but no one is really sure how to do it, how to tip the balance without risking their own lives. Something has to change, but everyone is too afraid.
It doesn’t matter. Things change anyway.
*
They find Snape near the edge of their central headquarters. Whether he is spying or coming for help, no one bothers to ascertain, they just petrify him and bring him back to the camp. To Harry. Harry doesn’t know what to do with him at first, and finally he just throws him in a cell, figuring that’s the safest thing to do.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do to the man if he’s around, underfoot, slimy and disgusting and there. Maybe spying, maybe not, but still a murderer and hateful and awful. It’s better to tuck him away somewhere safer. Harry doesn’t bother to examine who it’s safer for.
He doesn’t forget that Snape’s in that cell, but it avoids it for awhile, will take briefings on his state instead of going there himself. Snape is not bending to them, but Harry had expected that. Eventually, he decides to go. Just to see. What he wants to see, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t really matter in the end.
He’s surprisingly nervous about the whole thing, considering Snape has none of the power he used to. He cannot take points, or assign detention. He has no wand, no billowing black robes. And even so, Harry’s more cautious than he would be with just about anyone.
He practically tiptoes in, but his steps flatten, heavier, when he sees Snape sitting on the floor. His posture is rigid, but even so, he looks defeated, hair in his face and stripped of his robes, wearing muggle pyjamas. Harry relaxes.
And then Snape looks up, and he’s tense all over again. Snape just looks at him, doesn’t say anything for a moment. His mouth curls into a sneer, identical to the ones Harry was treated to at school. Snape’s the same, even without the privileges he won with a teaching position.
Harry doesn’t know what happens then. There’ve been other prisoners, other prisoners he’s visited, other prisoners he’s lost his temper with. None of those prisoners enraged him to the point that he forgot to use his wand, to bring him to punches and kicks, pure fury.
He leaves Snape a mess on the floor, bruised and bloody, and through it all, Snape hardly makes a sound.
*
For some reason, Harry keeps coming. He usually comes for no reason, though sometimes there are questions to ask, the same ones, over and over. ‘Why are you here?’ ‘What do you know?’ ‘Why did you kill him you fucking bastard? He did everything for you!’
Snape never says a word.
One day, a few weeks into the visits, there’s a shift. Harry blinks once, maybe twice, and things are different. He thinks a little differently, and feels a little differently, and he doesn’t like it.
He doesn’t understand it either. There’s hatred and disgust, just like always. There’s violence just under the surface. But there’s something else, something more unsettling than pure hatred, more disturbing than violence, something unfamiliar and completely routine, all at the same time. There’s something pressing hard against his stomach, in his gut and moving up to his throat, tracing through his extremities and leaving him shaking and helpless against it.
It’s no one thing, nothing clear cut. It’s a need for power, and a longing, and a temptation to cause as much pain as possible. It’s an excuse, and sick as it is, it’s respect. Because Snape can take whatever he does. Of course he can. Harry can never break him.
But he can try.
And he does try. He casts spells, and sometimes he loses his temper again, forgets his wand and throws kicks and punches and frustrated cries. He gives everything he has, and Snape always falls.
Snape is nothing when he’s on the floor, a cracked, useless man, so much smaller than Harry. If this is what triumph feels like, Harry wants more, wants all of it, scores of cracked, useless men that can no longer scare him.
*
Harry can’t sleep well any more; keeps waking in the middle of the night, clutching his forehead. It’s a tactical advantage, but he’d give it up if he could.
He paces instead of sleep, paces around the tent, which is much larger inside than any tent should be. It reminds him of some movie he saw a snatch of when he was younger; some great king or general had a tent the size of a house at least. He thought it was grand at the time. He doesn’t really think so now. He’s too tired to think much of anything at all.
He practically wears grooves in the floor, but there’s a spell to fix that. There’s a spell to fix just about everything, but there’s nothing to fix this, this stalemate, the way his friends don’t smile, the way Dumbledore’s gone, and this feeling, still crawling around his chest, ripping through his insides.
He doesn’t know how much more of this he can stand.
*
Hermione hides the violence of the Order behind books; Ron hides it behind a friendly smile. Harry is the hero, and any violence he would be responsible for is undoubtedly for the greater good. That’s what you’d believe if you listened to those placing him on a pedestal.
Harry isn’t really sure what a hero is. The only hero he’s ever had was Dumbledore, so he figures it takes knowledge and selflessness and bravery; the marks of a good person, but magnified. Harry’s always been far too naïve.
He’s begun to believe those people. Not that he believes he’s a hero, not really, but he does believe that his violence is justified, that every spell and punch and poisoned word he throws is for the greater good. Someone’s greater good, at least.
Some days, Harry’s horrified by the violence against Snape’s body, curses and hexes and cuts made by the muggleborns as a special brand of revenge. Other days, he’s the first to mark the man, feeling a sense of relief with every action.
On the days he’s horrified, he leaves quickly, lest he do something stupid, more unforgivable than spells or cuts or murder. Because sometimes his fingers itch for a lock. Sometimes they itch for Snape’s throat. He never touches anything.
No one ever bothers to wonder why exactly the Death Eaters never attempt to rescue Snape. He’s run out of sides to play, and he’s caught now. No one wants him, except to hurt.
Harry thinks that maybe Snape knows that, knows there’s nowhere left to go. Sometimes he seems almost resigned to it. He sneers less, and even if he still doesn’t say a word, it’s a different sort of silence, almost contemplative.
Those are the days Harry hurts him the most.
*
The Order’s always been careful with the people they send out, because more often than not, they end up appearing around the outskirts of the camp, eyes wide and uncomprehending. They usually have notes somewhere on their person, always addressed to one Harold James Potter. They are blank, but Harry knows what they mean.
They mean ‘I can get you too. I can get Ron and Hermione and Lupin and the Weasleys and anyone you’ve ever cared about, and I will show no mercy. I have none.’
Eventually they start sending out people that are a little more expendable. Their eyes are not so different from when they’d left, and Harry sleeps better at night.
*
One day, Ron goes out to assist in an arrangement of supplies a few kilometres from the camp. He does not come back for days, and when he does come back, he’s vacant, empty eyes and another letter addressed to one Harold James Potter.
Harry opens the letter with numb hands, expecting more of the same, a blank page, but this letter says something. Two words. ‘Your move’. As if this is some sick, twisted game. When Harry feels like he can move again, he goes straight to Snape’s cell.
His wand is in his hand before he can even think about what he’d do with it. Snape spasms, and Harry doesn’t know why, until he can hear the echo, a word in the air. Crucio. A word from his mouth. His move. He does not end it for some time, not until Snape is on the floor, passed out from the pain.
When Snape’s finally conscious, minutes or hours later, he stands, though it has to hurt him to do it. He keeps his back straight and his eyes forward, and he might be almost proper if he wasn’t so pathetic.
Harry hands Snape his own wand. Snape looks startled at first, almost caught out. He doesn’t do anything with it. Harry steps back, but Snape hasn’t moved. “Do something,” Harry orders. There’s nothing to be done.
“Petrify me. Escape. Do something!”
Snape looks shaken, and Harry feels it, trembling down to his bones. They face one another, neither moving, until Snape finally raises his hand. Harry flinches, but Snape only places the wand back into Harry’s hand. For once, reflexes fail Harry. It clatters to the floor.
Snape almost seems like he’d get it, but the effort of standing alone looks like it’ll kill him. Harry looks down at the wand, then back up. He does nothing, and they only look at one another until Harry leans in, presses his lips against the thin line of Snape’s flat expression, the lack of curve in his lips.
He doesn’t know why he does it. Snape doesn’t seem to either, and takes it, unresponsive, not pushing him away, but not returning the kiss. Harry pulls back after a moment. “Is this a new form of torture?” Snape asks, his voice cracked from torture and the weeks of silence. He serves Harry the weakest sneer he’s ever seen him attempt.
Harry doesn’t answer, just stoops to pick up the wand. He straightens, and Snape’s sneer is just a little stronger. He takes that as his cue to leave.
He manages about three steps before he’s bent double, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the concrete. Reality’s finally stepped in, and Harry can feel every single biting aspect of it down to his core.
The guard steps forward, someone he should probably know the name of, but he doesn’t. He gestures him away weakly, and stares back down at the vomit, as if looking will change anything. It looks exactly like what it is. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing. He doesn’t really care.
The feeling in Harry’s stomach settles now, sinks in with his guts and bones. He still can’t name it, but he can’t really deny it either, the way Snape’s lips had been chapped and unresponsive, but more than he’d had in months.
But it isn’t that either. It isn’t the lack. If he’d wanted it, he could have had Ginny here, but he hadn’t let her. He’d said it was for her safety, and it was, but it was more than that. He just isn’t sure the amount she could help would be worth the sacrifices made. If he wanted, he could have Ginny every night. She’d made that clear enough.
But he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want Snape either, he decides. It was a power trip. Never mind that he no longer feels like he is in power. Something had shifted there, something vital. Harry goes into his room, and he lays on his bed, numb, and when Hermione comes in, sobbing, he comforts her.
When he wakes up the next morning, Hermione is still on his bed, fully dressed, tear tracks still on her cheeks. He lays there for a long time, and then he goes about his business. There’s a gap in his day, a gap when he usually visits Snape, but he doesn’t that day. He goes back to his room, which is empty now, and he lies on his bed, and he closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t think either. He just lies.
There isn’t an end in sight. There was a clear beginning, maybe even a middle, the change from school boy to warrior. It was an imperfect change. Right now, Harry doesn’t feel very much like a warrior. Ron probably hadn’t felt like a warrior.
There is an end to this, probably. Harry will die, or Voldemort will die, or both will. Countless people from each side will die in the meantime. Harry doesn’t know what he is supposed to do with this information, so he doesn’t do anything.
He lays on his bed, and he keeps his eyes tightly shut, and he doesn’t think. And when his free time is up, he goes back about his business, and then he goes to sleep. And he repeats it the next day, eyes shut tight in his room instead of focusing on Snape’s face, his lank hair, his stooped body. He continues this until he feels there is nothing left of him.
People are dying every day; he gets casualty reports with breakfast. He’ll butter his toast while he learns about the deaths of former schoolmates. People are dying every day, often muggles, but sometimes his own people, and he can’t do anything about it. If he left the camp, he’d probably be captured within hours.
He’s biding his time here, waiting for some grand finale, and finally he can’t take the schedule, the strategy and lists and supplies. One day, instead of lying in bed again, slipping back into his comfortable void, he goes to Snape’s cell, spends an hour standing outside the door. The guard gives him funny looks, and Snape probably never knows he was there, but he feels better. Like something was righted again.
After a few days of this, Harry finally enters. He sees Snape sitting on the floor, lank and mean looking, as always, and he walks up to him. He stands in front of Snape until Snape looks up, sneer firmly in place, but faltering when he sees it’s Harry. Harry’s quiet for a moment, just looks at the man. “Say something,” he says finally, voice breaking. Snape just looks at him.
“Say something,” Harry demands, the most authoritative he’s been since he decided none of this was worth caring about. “Please say something.” The authority’s gone, his power as well, but Harry can’t bring himself to care. “For Merlin’s sake, say something.”
“Something,” Snape says, voice cracked and raw, just like it should be, a curl of weak, wry humour in the word. Harry’s knees give out, and he kneels in front of the man.
“Say it again.”
“Something.”
And then Harry crawls forward, buries his face against Snape’s thin, wasted chest, and cries.