“Pain is something that everyone faces. Sometimes there’s more, sometimes there’s less. Sometimes it lasts longer for one person than it does for another. Everyone has their own pain. Your integrity is measured by your ability to withstand, and keep doing what needs to be done.”

-James Potter upon being released from St. Mungo’s after his capture by Death Eaters

Harry woke up in the girl’s bathroom on the first floor to the feeling of a scratchy tongue on his cheek. Cleo purred and nuzzled at him. He couldn’t force his eyes open yet, but managed to stand, and limp towards the mirror. Cleo had climbed onto his shoulder and mewed just before he ran his hips into the sink. Very carefully, Harry blinked his eyes open, and was instantly repulsed by what he saw in the hazy light.

Half of his face was sticky and black; in the night the blood gathered the dirt from the floor and congealed. The blood came both from his scar and the cuts he inflicted himself. His right eye was swollen shut again, and his lip was broken. There were bruises marbling his forearms, matching perfectly the majority of his torso. The hole in his side was almost healed now, six days after the Quidditch match. Since that blissful moment, his world had corkscrewed into a nightmare.

Severus had gone missing the day of the match, four simultaneous attacks had been launched, and Harry had seen all of them without managing to wake up.

The next night there were four more attacks, and he managed to reach the largest of them.

Each night since there were attacks which he watched in terror before breaking free to go help the victims. It was driving Voldemort insane. Once Harry got there, none of the Death Eaters left, and none could report who he was. The cold sadism he demonstrated would have terrified the world had they ever seen it.

But no one knew.

Harry would just disappear at night, fight, kill, heal, and return for class the next morning.

He was immune to the Energy Potion now, and worse: he was addicted to it. No I’m not. It’s nothing serious. I drink it when I want to.

The tattered frame of his body was too thin for his clothes, and his ribs could be counted with ease.

All he wanted was to fall back to sleep—without dreams this time—and wake up when everything was better. Maybe he would wake up and his friends wouldn’t hate him. And maybe Voldemort will turn into a Hippie. Even Neville had begun to join in on the Gryffindor’s fun. When Harry had tried to ask him for a favor, he had been cursed across the hall.

He washed his face with icy water, then healed it perfectly. Everything else, he left alone. Harry dressed, drained a flask of Energy Potion, picked up his things and hobbled away.

His limp was the only injury he bore that wasn’t from a Death Eater.

Dean had pushed him down a flight of stairs.

Harry had responded by pushing him through a flight of stairs.

=====

“Potter.” The voice came from behind him, low, sinister and angry. Without thinking, Harry spun and fired half a dozen spells at the attacker’s face. The man was pinned quickly to the wall, unconscious, tied up, stripped of his left sleeve, floating two feet up, and intoxicated.

The man was also Draco Malfoy.

Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about beating the crap out of his only remaining ally.

A few seconds later the spells had been reversed, and Harry was facing an extremely upset blonde Death Eater.

“What the Bloody Hell was that?”

Harry shrugged, “Let’s call it six years of comeuppance, shall we?”

Draco scoffed and straightened his hair. “When are you going to come through on your end of our bargain? It has been almost two weeks, we arranged for it to be within one. Would you like me to go back on my end, and give my Lord and Master an early Christmas present?”

“First tell me what happened to Snape.” Harry mentally slapped his near-slip. He had tried to say Severus.

“No. Attack me first.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost six.”

“Go to dinner Malfoy.”

With a smirk to put the Marauders to shame, the blonde nodded and swept away. Harry shook his head, muttering to his father as he went.

“I was just asked to go attack someone. I have two compatriots, both of whom are Slytherins and have tried to kill me before. One of them is missing, and one is a Death Eater. My life has become completely surreal.”

=====

The room was cold and damp. The floor was no longer solid, and made horrid noises as he shifted. There was nothing above him or to any side, just open air, with a several thousand foot fall seducing him to try and fly. His wand had been taken away, his hair shorn off, and he had been tortured.

Gods knew he had been tortured, but no one else ever would. He was going to die here, balanced on this precipice to hell, with his sins laid out before him. No one would ever know, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

A long gash opened his side in a sickly jagged line.

Maybe that was why the ground was damp.

He thought that his ankle may have been broken, but could no long differentiate the areas of pain. That was what made them all such good torturers, they knew how to confuse and distort the mind as they warped the body.

Bruises covered his face and torso mottling his skin in purples and greens. His nose was broken, and both his eyes were blackened and swollen.

Far above him though, there was a little cloud that was shifting. Not much, but enough to reveal a tiny star. Maddened, a wheezing chuckle slipped out. He used to be fond of stars. He used to be fond of many things.

Another cloud covered the star, and he was left in darkness once more.

Severus Snape was going to die, and he just couldn’t wait.