Harry didn’t know much about muggles- despite his Mother being muggleborn, his only real educative experience of the non-wizarding world came from a yearly visit to his Aunt’s house. He knew enough, however, to know that what was happening to him was far from an everyday occurrence. He was dragged feet first, and then with a loud crack the world went black before his eyes…

Harry felt as though he had just come out of deep sleep. He had no idea how long he’d been on the floor. There was a sharp, throbbing pain in his left ankle. He squinted at the dimly lit room, seeing that his foot was jutting out at a strange angle. Harry very much wanted to cry, he screwed up his clammy face- concentrating with all his might on making himself disappear. Disapparate, he thought the word was. Nothing happened. ‘Typical’, Harry thought. He wondered why he could never make anything out of the ordinary happen when he wanted it to, and yet his accidental magic was always flaring up at home when he’d really rather it didn’t. Home… right now what Harry wanted more than anything in the world was to be back at Hogwarts, in the warmth and protection of his parents’ arms. He’d tell them everything, about the dares, the stealing –all of it- if he got out of this sinister, dark place alive. Harry tried again to harness his magic, but was left exhausted and disorientated.

“Hello? Hello? Please, please somebody help me!”

Harry whimpered in desperation, allowing one silent tear to trickle down his cheek. He fumbled, trying to move his hand to brush the tear away only finding the rope bindings too tight for him to move freely. He began to feel like he couldn’t breathe, that the walls were closing in on him.

“HELP!” He screamed as loud as his lungs would let him, banging his bound wrists on the wooden door.

The door was suddenly pushed open from the other side, and Harry found himself thrust backwards, landing awkwardly and with a clatter on the dirty floor.

“My, my. What is all of this about? Is our honoured guest not suitably pleased with his lodgings?”

The woman’s dark eyes flickered over Harry, and he felt that he was being weighed and found very much wanting. The startling woman licked her lips like a beast about to toy with its kill, and let out a terrible high-pitched laugh.

“Ickle baby Harry makes a lot of noise, doesn’t he?”

Her words dripped with disdain as her eyes gleamed manically whilst she watched Harry cowering with his back up against the wall.

A rotund man trembled besides her, staring only at the ground. The woman turned to him and prodded him with the tip of her wand so that he looked up and nervously peered at her face.

“Dear Wormy, how rude it is of you not to address your old friend. Really, one would think you were trying to hide, skulking around in the dark like that…” Her words trailed off, and she looked at the man quizzically through slanted eyes.

“Hide? N-n-not at all B-B-Bella,” stammered the man that Harry presumed was called Wormy. He wondered how he was supposed to be ‘old friends’ with him, it was rather difficult aged seven to have old friends you don’t recollect.

Harry manoeuvred himself into a sitting position and studied his assailants.

“Let me go! When my Daddy finds you, you’ll be in so much trouble. He’ll curse you dead, he will! You’ll be on the green listed in a second.” Harry stuck out his bottom lip in defiance.

The woman, Bella, let out that same horrible ringing laugh and reached a gloved hand out to caress Harry’s cheek. Her lips curled upwards in a smile that was absent of any real feeling and she began to talk:

“I was,” she purred, “under the impression that your pal Wormtail here already finished your Father off years ago. Why, Wormtail, was it not you who took our Lord to the Potters’ house?” She turned her black, soulless eyes on the man, and he flinched- his piggy eyes darting nervously around the room.

It was at that precise moment that it dawned on Harry who his captors were, an enormous ray of light illuminating his thoughts.

“You!” he spat, with the passion of fully-grown man. “You, I know who you are. Peter Pettigrew”

Harry tried to stand on his injured foot, but with his hands tied he could not steady himself and so he fell, off balance, in a heavy heap at Bella’s feet.

“You’re dead you are---” But before he could finish his sentence, Bella removed her glove and the same hand that had caressed him mere moments before swept down and silenced him with a stinging slap. The tears he’d been trying to keep at bay sprang into his haunting green eyes as blood rushed to his lip where Bella’s ring had ripped his flesh.

“You, you silly little boy, are in no position to make idle threats. Imagine… your poor Mother. How careless of her. To lose, at first her husband- and then her son. She really should keep better watch over her possessions. And now she’s married to that treacherous bastard, Snape- I don’t know how the woman can possibly live with herself…”

“My Daddy’s worth a million of you, Deatheaters, that’s what you are. Daddy told me you’re all evil scum, with no single backbone between the lot of you. You have to follow Lord Thingy rather than be brave enough to think for yourselves!” Harry screamed through his tears.

Bella bent down to be on eye level with the boy, and pulled his face close to her own. And in a poisonous, chilling whisper she spoke, “Your ‘Daddy’ obviously neglected to tell you the reason he knows deatheaters so well. Dear, sweet Harry- Your Daddy is one of us.”

“You…” Harry thought of the worst naughty word in his repertoire. “You lying b-b-bitch!” He shut his eyes and flinched, waiting to be struck again. Bella pushed the child roughly to the floor, and brandished her wand, the insane gleam back in her eyes again as she made the boy scream with a quick crucio.

“Bella… the plan…. We need the boy alive-“ stuttered Wormtail, his eye nervously on her wand…

Dudley didn’t mean to be unnecessarily cruel. It just happened. Perhaps, by an unknown force of nature- Dudley was destined to be an odious little boy. He lived by two very basic rules, he took what he wanted- and if he was prevented from doing so, he cried and ran to his parents and they got it for him. Simple. So when Dudley came bounding back into the house it was not an entirely unusual scenario.

“Mum, Muuuuuuuum,” he yelled, panting in exhaustion at having run a full 100 metres, “they took him- these weirdoes with sticks- they took Potter.”

Lily sat back in her chair, her face slack and unmoving, eyes staring vacantly at the spot where she last saw her son expecting him to materialise so she could berate him for playing such a horrible trick. Severus reached into her handbag, located his wand, and then left the house- the door slamming loudly behind him.

Sure enough, he saw what he was looking for.

There, hanging in the sky as if to personally mock his deflection, was the dark mark in its full glory. He performed a counter curse, for the sake of any passing muggles’ sensibilities. He knew he had to get Lily out of Privet Drive, he had to get her and himself back to Hogwarts- back to Albus, who surely would know what to do- Albus Dumbledore, the man who defeated Grindelwald, would find his son.

Severus couldn’t think clearly, his head was a muddle of emotion he had not thought possible to feel all at once. He felt sick to his stomach, and that wasn’t just the effects of the dire meal he’d eaten. He went back inside and pushed Dudley away from his Mother’s apron strings. He looked into the boy’s eyes without bothering to ask for a description and located the memory he needed.

Severus saw Harry pushing the fat boy’s bike, and there- on the corner of Wisteria Walk- were two cloaked figures. A large round silhouette dressed in shabby black robes, and a tall thin presence that carried itself in such a way that Severus immediately knew its identity. One of them stunned Harry within a second of sighting him, sending the child crashing downwards onto the pavement. The large shapeless man grabbed Harry by his feet and pulled him over to the woman, before all three of them apparated out of Little Whinging to God knows where.

How on earth was Bellatrix out of Azkaban?

How had nobody thought to tell him or Lily?

Why had nobody warned them that on the one day a year his family ventured unarmed into the muggle world, a raving lunatic bitch had escaped from her prison cell?

A raving lunatic bitch with had a penchant for destroying anything and anyone who got in the way of her precious Dark Lord, no less. Hadn’t that been why she tortured Frank and Alice? Searching for a way back to her Master… Her Master- a man many simplistically believe to have been destroyed by Harry on that fateful Halloween night.

His Master, too- Severus supposed, unable to deny the consequences of the past.

Before Severus could pull himself together he was interrupted by an angry voice:

“Now look here, you always said you’d bring none of that… that freakish behaviour here. It won’t do having you all going around pointing your stupid sticks at us good, decent folk---”

Severus held up one hand. “Cease your idle chatter Dursley, can a simpleton like yourself not comprehend the gravity of the situation?” Severus spoke his next lines slowly, as if speaking to a very young child:

“Harry. Has. Been. Taken.”

He looked at his reactionless wife. She was not going to lose another loved one. Not on his watch. He could not bear to lose her as he knew he would if they could not recover Harry.

“Come quickly Lily we must get news of this to Albus- I daren’t risk sending a patronus here- we must hurry dear.” Severus spoke softly, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

“Take the boy, eh? Well I dunno why anyone would want to take a good for nothing little wretch like him- Petunia, don’t you agree?”

Lily’s face had drained of colour. She gave her sister a hard look, as if daring her to reply, and then she rose from the table- took her husband’s arm in hers, and with a crack they apparated to the house of Arabella Figg, an old friend of Dumbledore who let them use her floo.

Arabella was sitting in an armchair, a cat slumbering on her knee. She looked surprised to see the Snapes back again so soon and opened her mouth to question the pair.

“What---”

“They have Harry.”

Lily spoke the three words with a deadly finality, taking a handful of floo powder from the pot over the hearth and welcoming the green flames. Severus followed in her wake.

Harry was cold. His joints were sore. He thought that he had felt pain before, but what that scary lady did with her wand was like nothing he had known. It had felt like he was on fire. This was not like falling from a broom, or tumbling down the stairs. This was a burning, searing pain that made him unable to think- all he could do was just feel, feel the excruciating pain.

He shivered and looked around him. He was in a windowless room, the only light coming in from a small grate at the top of one wall. A grate far too small, and too high for him to use as an escape. The room was empty, not even a bowl of water or a morsel of food. Suddenly it all began to feel very real, this was not an adventure from one of his storybooks.

He wanted his Mother. If he could have any wish in the world it would be to see her face. For her to tell him that everything would be okay. He curled onto his side as best he could, shut his weary eyes, and hoped very much that when he next opened them he would be back in his bedroom- his Father looming over his bed, ready to explode in full Snape shouting mode over some minor infraction. And this world of pain would be but a distant memory.

Harry was shocked out of his sleep, the sounds of footsteps reverberating off the floor made him open his eyes in fear of being hexed again. The door opened to his cell and the light flooded in, blinding his eyes.

“Levicorpus” Wormtail spoke. Harry found himself raised in the air, floating behind the man as he walked into another equally squalid room. Harry opened his mouth to speak but found no words could come out, he had worn his throat out screaming with pain and for his parents.

“We have a task for you, little one. You will do exactly as I say.”

Harry, being as young as he was and not thinking of the consequences, shook his head in a characteristic unwise show of defiance.

He found himself falling to the ground with a thud, looked up at the crazed deatheater and began to writhe in pain for a second time since his capture.

Albus Dumbledore knew that many in the wizarding world believed him to be infallible. He was a revered, kindly grandfather to thousands- and in particular to one special little boy that he had known since birth. But right now he had no answers, he had no half finished riddles to appease people with. He had not known on Friday night that two prisoners had done the seemingly impossible and escaped from the impenetrable fortress that held the country’s lowlife at bay.

He knew Bellatrix Lestrange to be extremely skilled at dark magic, she had been his pupil after all. But Peter? Chubby, scared Peter Pettigrew- the man who had been so caught up in playing a game for those far more powerful that himself- Peter was barely capable of tying his own shoelace without snivelling. Dumbledore felt that it was his gravest error to ever have trusted that man. To have let James place his own protection in that wet, disgusting sell-out.

Dumbledore may not know where Harry was, but he had a good idea of why he had been taken. And he knew that reason would cause almost as much pain as the boy’s actual disappearance. The aurors were out, searching high and low to find him. Severus was paying visits to all his old ‘contacts’. But Dumbledore knew something was missing, it was there- staring him in the face, but this was a puzzle that even he could not solve.

“Oh Harry,” Bella cooed in a faux singsong voice. “Are you not enjoying our games?”

Harry had locked himself up in that quiet room inside his head. Everything was light and airy, the window looked over the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts. There was soft, soothing music coming from somewhere- and all Harry had to do was close his eyes and try not to think and the pain was no more. He had no idea how long he had been in this strange, dark house. He’d pass out from pain and then some time later, they’d come back point their wands and enervate him, he’d say no and so the cycle repeated itself.

“Cat got your tongue, little one?”

Harry was happy where he was. He didn’t want to come back out. He could hear her mocking him, her laughter growing louder until it forced him to jolt back to reality.

“Doesn’t Snape tell you about us? His oldest, truest friends. My Harry, your father certainly has a lot of secrets. Let me see, Wormtail? Wormtail, remember that time when Snape killed a fat, old mudblood because she spilt blood on his robe? Or perhaps when we levitated that family of filthy halfbreeds over the Thames? What was the game we played? Wasn’t it seeing how high one could drop them into the water before their brains were splattered… We had a name for it, I’m sure.”

Bellatrix sighed, bored at the boy’s lack of reaction.

“Don’t you understand Harry- we make sport out of killing, and Severus Snape was one of us. And we want him back.” Bella traced the tracks left by Potter’s tears. She grabbed his ear and gave it a sharp tug, shaking the boys head from side to side and forcing his eyes open.

“Did Daddy not tell his precious little Harry about Azkaban? How he sold our souls to pave the way to his own freedom? Leaving his past behind to waste away in that hovel. He thought we’d die in there- and his past with us! Traitor! That man you have chosen to be your surrogate father played us, played us like a hand of cards. He gambled our lives for his own redemption. He chose to swap sides, and we were his bargaining chips. But he’ll lose in the end. Our master will rise again, and we will be rewarded above all others for destroying two of the greatest thorns in his side! We will be honoured, baby Harry- and here’s the irony- you are our tool now, ours to barter with…. Snape has no cards up his sleeve this time.”

Her face so close to his, he could see himself reflected in her black, frenzied eyes.

Her words were beyond his comprehension.

Harry knew love. He loved many things: His Mother, above all, Daddy, Uncle Albus, Honeydukes chocolate, playing Quidditch with Charlie and his friends, helping Hagrid take Fang for walks, flying his broom over the lake…

Harry knew hate- the seven year-old diluted version. He hated being called names. He hated when Mummy was sad, or when Daddy told him that he was disappointed in him. He hated having to eat his broccoli, or being told ‘this hurts me more than it does you’ when it so obviously didn’t.

In Harry’s mind, there existed only good- things that he loved, and bad- things that he hated. It was a world that neglected to include shades of grey, constructed out of purely childish emotion. Therefore, Harry could not understand what Bella was saying. His Daddy came down on the side of good (well, most of the time) so Harry found it impossible to believe that Severus had anything in common with that horrible woman and the cowardly man… because if Daddy were to have been friends with them, he would have to be bad… bad, bad, bad and that meant that Harry wouldn’t love him so.

“Malfoy knows nothing, Albus… How can it be that the man does not know when his own sister-in-law escapes from prison?”

Severus paced up and down the length of Dumbledore’s office. He looked at Albus, wanting to see a small sign of hope. Anything that could stop this feeling of utter terror and helplessness that had stayed with him every second since Harry’s abduction. It had been days, days spent searching every single place he could think of. Every spot he knew to have a connection to Bellatrix or Pettigrew. There was a team of 50 of Great Britain’s finest aurors on the case. Dumbledore, himself, had been searching through great tomes for some sort of spell that could be used to help locate Harry.

“Severus, wearing a hole in my carpet is not going to bring us any closer to finding Harry.” Dumbledore sighed, wearily.

Severus stopped his pacing and collapsed into the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk. He put his head in his hands and tried to bring back his mask of passivity. Dumbledore reached out and placed his hand on Severus’ arm, trying to think of something comforting to say that the other man would not deem as ‘mindless platitudes’.

He was broken from his thoughts by the sound of his floo alighting. He swivelled round, and drew in a sharp intake of breath as he saw the very woman they had been searching for.

“Oh look, how touching… Dumble-bore and his Sevvy.”

Severus was on his feet, wand drawn in a split second. Bellatrix laughed, “You cannot harm me, Snape. Not if you want to see that child alive. I suggest you both sit back down so we can have a little talk…”