Seeking the Star

WARNING: this chapter contains graphic non-consentual sex (read: rape). if you are under seventeen, or this squicks you, please do not read this chapter. you have been warned.

many thanks to my beta, IGToW, who helped me accomplish what needed to be done in this chapter. it would not be what it is without her.

Ch.10.

After the Quidditch Incident, as Harry came to think of it, the next several weeks were surprisingly quiet. Hallowe\'en was coming up in a bit more than a fortnight, and the students were already looking forward to the feast. No one dared chat about the upcoming holiday in Professor Snape\'s class, though.

Harry was really beginning to enjoy Potions. He was starting to see the same things in it that made Hermione, and, though he didn\'t know it, Snape himself, love the subject so much. It was exacting, but perfectible. And without Ron to distract him and Snape targeting him, much easier. Even though he did his partnered potions with Hermione, they both knew that he was holding his own in the subject, and didn\'t need her help. If nothing else, his work on Dumbledore\'s twice-weekly Protection Potions proved that. With Harry\'s infusion of protective magic, the potions had become far more powerful. Even Snape seemed impressed, meaning that he bestowed the extraordinary praise \"Good work, Mr. Potter,\" when he and Harry had finished brewing the potion for the first time.

They had come to the end of another successful class, and Harry was packing up his supplies when he noticed a strange little stone on his desk.

\"Hey, Mione, any idea what this...\" He picked it up to examine it, and felt the familiar sickening lurch just behind his navel that signaled a Portkey activating. Arriving, he had brief flash of tapestries before he was tumbling down a long flight of curved, stone stairs as he materialised a few inches above them. Helpless to stop himself, he careened off of the sides, the sharp edges of the treads breaking random bones as the solid walls and ornately carved rails bruised and battered him all the way down.

A lone man at the bottom of the stair, obviously waiting, tsk\'d in mock exasperation as the young man rushed to meet him. \"So impatient, you are, my boy,\" he said softly. He stared at the still, crumpled body on the flagstones at his feet and bending down, felt for a pulse in the lax, outstretched throat. He hissed a sharp sound of relief when he felt the rather strong throbbing under his long pale fingers, his lips curling into an evil parody of a smile. His Master would have been most upset if this little play-time killed the Boy Who Lived. \"Welcome to my humble abode, Mr. Potter. So good of you to join us.\"

He motioned to the two men standing respectfully back from the scene. In silence, they roughly gathered the boy up and carried his dead weight to the cold chamber reserved for his visit.

***

Professor Snape knew by the sudden silence that something was terribly wrong. He looked up irritably from the papers he was grading. The class seemed stunned into silence, and Hermione Granger looked positively terrified.

\"What just happened here? And where is Mr. Potter?\" Granger broke into an abrupt sob, but immediately began the process of composing herself. She wasn\'t sure if anyone else had seen Harry vanish, and it was important to start looking as quickly as they could.

\"Harry just--just disappeared.\" Tears flowed down her face, but Snape could see that her mind was working again. \"I think--a Portkey. He was asking me what something was, and then he was gone.\"

Snape was seized by a panic that didn\'t reach his face. The rest of the class seemed seized by similar panic, but their mode of expression was much louder. Students were milling about, talking hysterically. Even the Slytherin looked shocked, and Snape was fairly sure that whatever had happened moments ago was undoubtedly the work of one of them.

\"Silence!\" he thundered. \"Class dismissed. You are all to go straight back to your respective Houses. Anyone caught roaming the hallways will be severely punished. Miss Granger, you will come with me.\" Severus stalked out of the room before the students had a chance to move, Hermione in his wake.

Hermione surmised, correctly, that they were heading to the Headmaster\'s office. She furiously wiped the tears from her face, willing no more to fall. She needed to be together for this. Harry needed them.

***

\"Enervate!\" Harry heard the command as an echo in his exploding head as the spell tore through him, waking every nerve into a white hot agony. He struggled to sit up, onlyfindfind himself bound, face up, on something hard and so cold, it leached the heat out of him. He tried to turn his head to see where he was, but quickly closed his eyes against the wave of nausea that brought bile to his throat.

\"Ah, so glad to see you with us, Mr. Potter.\" Lucius Malfroy was bending over him, his long white hair brushing Harry\'s bare chest. \"I trust you enjoyed your rest?\" He turned to the woman at his side, \"Bella, my darling, Mr. Potter seems to have learned some wandless magic over the summer.\" His hand swept to the side where one of the two men who had brought him in lay crumpled on the floor from a Stupefy curse. \"Could you please see to it he doesn\'t do so again?\" A wave of hate and fear rose in Harry, but with them nearly came the contents of his stomach. He fought to swallow it all down.

Bellatrix purred deep in her throat, \"Certainly, lover--my pleasure.\" From the sleeve of her gown she brought out a slender dagger. Harry\'s eyes widened at the sight and he waved his fingers trying to push her away with another spell. She laughed heartily as the spell bounced harmlessly off a shield spell surrounding her. \"Oh, my little boy, you are going to have to do better than that.\" She laid her hand on his, holding the fingers flat on the stone and with slow precision, drew the blade ever so slowly, but deeply, across the back of his hands right below the knuckles. Bump, bump, bump the little knife dragged across the bone, scoring it as she lovingly cut the tendons to his fingers. When she\'d finished with this wand hand, she slowly made her way to the other side of him, doing the same to the other hand.

Harry arched against the bonds holding him, desperate to escape the searing in his hands. He felt something soft, but solid on them and looking down, saw her licking some of the blood off of his hand, her fingers making sure in the wound that her work was well done. She raised blood covered hands to his face, caressing his cheek and bending down, kissed him softly on the mouth, her tongue smearing his blood on his lips. \"Such a tender morsel,\" she murmured, biting his lip. Looking up at the amused man standing there watching her, his arms folded, she chuckled saying, \"Tonight, we feast.\"

\"Yes, my darling, we will, but it seems to me that if Mr. Potter has learned wandless magic, we need to make doubly sure he cannot do so anymore.\"

The first vicious contact of the swinging cane raged through Harry, stealing his air as agony spiraled out from his crushed fingers through him until his whole body contorted to escape, straining against the tight bonds holding him fast. He closed his eyes as Lucius\' face contorted in malicious glee while the silver head descended once more; he knew it would not be the last.

***

Dumbledore was waiting for them. \"Severus, what just happened?\" The Headmaster looked more agitated than Hermione had ever seen him. He was pacing around his office, his long crooked fingers knotting and unknotting. There wasn\'t even a hint of a twinkle in his piercingly blue eyes.

\"Harry Potter abruptly and mysteriously disappeared from my Potions classroom, Sir. Miss Granger believes that he was Portkeyed.\"

\"Harry is no longer on Hogwarts grounds.\" Dumbledore\'s voice was very grave.

\"Well, he\'s used Sanos on you before! Can\'t you locate him?\" Severus snapped. Potter had disappeared in his class, under his watch, and probably because some foolish Death Eater thought that he might sit on the news. He was overwhelmed with guilt at failing Albus, and, oddly enough, for failing Potter as well. Dumbledore shook his head.

\"He\'s out of range. There are two kinds of Sanos bonding, Severus, and the bond depends on the type of Sanos used. Hand-placing Sanos is the type commonly used for healing and creates a bond of only moderate strength; it allows only a superficial sharing of minds. The other kind of Sanos, once used twice between the same two people, creates a bond very similar to a marriage bond, which is why it is not commonly used. The bond Harry and I have is a hand-placing bond, and as such, I can only feel him at close distance, probably about a mile.\"

\"So he could be anywhere?\" Severus asked. His hopes for Harry\'s quick rescue were slipping away.
Dumbledore nodded again. \"And it is imperative that we find him as soon as possible. Where do we start?\"

Snape walked over to the window, staring unseeingly. For long moments he was lost in thought. \"Lucius. It would be like Malfroy.\" he said, almost as if to himself. \"And company. Lucius has escaped from Azkaban, and the bumbling Ministry has no idea as to his location. If I\'m right, we\'d better hope we find Harry soon.\" It completely escaped Snape that he had called Harry by his given name. Dumbledore looked down at Hermione, who had collapsed into a chair and was listening, dry eyed and trembling.

\"Miss Granger,\" he said kindly, \"go to Madam Pomfrey and get a Calming Draught, and then go immediately back to Gryffindor Tower. I am sending a message to Minerva to cancel all classes and bring all students back to their respective Houses.\" She nodded dumbly and made to leave. On the threshold, she turned.

\"You\'ll save him, won\'t you, Professor Snape? He trusts you, you know.\" Snape nodded at her once, shocked by her revelation.

\"I shall do my best, Miss Granger.\" She nodded back, once, and flew down the stairs. Dumbledore and Severus stared at each other.

***

Harry stared at the dried blood under his cheek, blood that wasn\'t his but was fresh enough to fill his overloaded senses with the coppery scent of old iron. His hands were bound over his head, his abdomen bent over the edge of what appeared to be a carved altar; they\'d tied his feet to the base, spread wide, leaving him exposed. The cold marble ate at the warmth of his bare skin, the relief images in the top digging fire into the broken bones of his hips. He\'d lost consciousness after they\'d moved him here; however, another Enervating spell brought him awake screaming and helpless at the first dry thrust of a violent, relentless, intimate invasion of his body. As time progressed, the numbers of rutting Death Eaters blurred into one horrific whole as blood and semen became the only lubricant allowed him, the blessed moments of peace shattered as spells were used to keep him awake.

As yet another made sport of his body, he began to understand that the training with Dumbledore this summer had really had a purpose, but for the life of him, he could not make himself separate from the agony. He needed his hands, he was his hands; his Schema and Schemata abilities were centered on the now useless swollen stubs of crushed bone. He tried to heal them, but the pounding into his body was sending fresh waves of distracting agony following old ones as his penis was driven hard into the unforgiving apron of the altar with each enthusiastic thrust.

He just needed to concentrate.

***

\"This isn\'t Voldemort\'s work, Albus. Otherwise I\'d have been summoned and made to participate. Lucius must be doing this on his own. Harry really could be anywhere. We should check Malfroy Manor, first.\" Severus felt a twinge of terror building inside him. If Lucius had Harry, there was a high probability of getting him out alive, as Lucius would not be so foolish as to disobey his Master. What they needed to worry about was getting the boy out before his mind was completely destroyed. He slumped into a chair, head in hands. The Boy Who Lived, stolen by Lucius Malfroy so that the blond could have a bit of sport. He felt Dumbledore\'s hand on his shoulder.

\"Come, Severus. We must begin. I am going to contact Cornelius Fudge and see if we can have some Auror help. They have control of the Malfroy Estate.\"

Snape nodded numbly and headed down to his workroom. He was going to prepare the healing draughts and sleep draughts that they would need--and think.

***

Harry was in such agony that he was nearly beyond pain. He was tied down again to the marble altar, but over the past numberless hours he\'d been tied alternately to a chair, the wall, and the floor. He might have been other places, but over time but it was getting hard to remember. The room was entirely stone, windowless and damp, with a feeling of weighted ancientness that came to him even through his suffering. It was filled with the suffering of others, more recent.

His knees and ankles had been tied together with his body pulled up into a kneeling position, and then secured so that his buttocks were parallel to the end of the table, and his wrists were bound at the corners of the table, so that he appeared to be in a position of prostrated worship. His legs had long ago gone numb, and he could no longer even feel the slapping of hips against his buttocks, or the invasion of his boHe wHe was covered in blood and semen and only the gods knew what else. His eyes were swollen shut and encrusted with blood, so he was finally spared the sight of his captors.
All of their faces were burned into his brain.
Their faces as they cursed him.
Their faces as they hit him.
Their faces as they came.

But now he was in blissful darkness. Beneath him, the stone was slick and sticky, and finally warm. Harry supposed it was his blood. For a long time, he had felt the warmth trickling in steady, gentle pulses from his head, from his back, from his chest, from his hands, from his anus. A few hours ago, it had all faded, and now he barely even noticed the fingernails that ripped into his hips, the blows rained on him, or the occasional spurts of semen over his back, or into his face. Recently, he had even ceased to feel looseness of his teeth, or taste his own coppery blood. The only thing that could make him feel anything was the whispered ucioucio\" of Lucius Malfroy, who seemed to find it quite satisfying to bring himself to completion via Harry\'s uncontrolled muscle spasms.

When the men tired, Lucius let Bellatrix have him, anticipating an entirely different sport for his compatriots. She had them lay him back down on the stone altar, not even bothering to tie him down. She bound him with her words and her wand, leaving him more helpless than when the cruel ropes had dug into his flesh. Lovingly, with the concentration of a master, she carved a death mark on the tender inside face of his left arm with her favorite daggers. She dipped them first into a small brazier, until their keen edges and wicked points glowed a hot red. Stroking his skin with those edges and pressed points, the image of the skull and the snake took slow perfect shape amidst the sounds of sizzling and roasting flesh. While waiting for her little tools to gather their rosy colour, she would lean over and bite and lick Harry in all his sensitive places. Under this torture of a different sort, more evil and calculated, he was helpless to do more than gaze at her in sickened pain.

As she started her artistic work on his stomach and abdomen, he finally broke away from the physical tortures, could finally retreat into that place Albus had forced him to find this summer when the pain of trainiecamecame too intense. The solid place within himself where he always resided in bliss and peace. He found his mantra and soon they, and what else they were doing to him, faded into a shadowed background as he silently repeated the words.

\'I am not the pain. I won\'t let them break me. I am not broken. Albus and Severus will come. I am not the pain. I won\'t let them break me. I am not broken. Albus and Severus will come.\' Harry, in the midst of his agony, did not notice that Snape had become Severus. He simply repeated his litany, and waited for the men to come and make it stop.


a/n-
the tower-unexpected, total, sudden change; a sudden event that destroys one\'s foundations. catastrophic events; events that the individual has no control over except in how he will respond to them.