Harry lifted his head from the hard surface it rested on, wincing as it made his pounding temples spiked yet more painfully. Feeling badly hung-over, he raised himself to a kneeling position and sat back on his feet, struggling to keep his swimming head level so he could properly look around himself.

Light filtered in through a high window, illuminating a long, empty cellar—empty except for the bars spanning floor to ceiling, boxing him into the corner.

Harry blinked into the gloom and recalled his last memories. Black cloth and a choking struggle, that and a frighteningly painful, failed attempt to Disapparate. Harry fingered his neck and found a thick, spiky necklace there. He felt an aversion to it that made him certain it was cursed. Its links felt oily in an unhealthy way and it did not have a catch. Harry listened and, not hearing anything, tried again to Disapparate while imagining the alleyway beside St. Mungo’s as a destination assuming he was still near London. A searing jolt like high voltage electricity went through him and the cage stubbornly remained around him.

Gasping, he stayed on his hands and knees until the shaking stopped.

The Floo flared as Snape sat at the dining room table. He glanced up so fast he almost pulled something in his neck, but it was McGonagall bending and entering the room.

“Your note was most abrupt, Severus. Am I to understand Harry is missing?” she asked in her speaking-to-an-errant-student manner.

Snape nodded and returned to perusing the last few days’ issues of the Daily Prophet for any kind of clue.

“Merlin.” She pocketed the note and stepped up beside him to read over his shoulder. Snape rested his head on his hand and gazed unseeing at the wrinkled parchments before him. McGonagall asked, “What happened?”

Keeping his face down, Snape explained, “He didn’t come home last night. I…assumed he was being difficult. He had been during the week…was unhappy about my departing.” He pounded his forehead once. “I did not imagine that he was in difficulty.” He finally sat up and waving his arm upward argued, “His Chimrian has been perfectly calm. She reflects his every mood and I assumed…”

McGonagall clamped a hand over Snape’s shoulder. “Severus, calm down. Start at the beginning and this time, no self remonstration allowed.”

Snape managed the first part, but not the second and at the end, McGonagall said, “You don’t know this young woman though?”

“I have not met her before. This was to be only their third date. She did pass Moody’s scrutiny.”

“Well, that is a fairly difficult test. Not sure I would pass it.” She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down as though intending to stay a while.

“There is no reason for you to—” Snape began.

“Clearly, you are in need of company, Severus,” she interrupted him. “Have you tried the Beacon Spell again?” When he shook his head, she asked, “You said it worked last time.”

“It did, in a way, but I have not tried again.”

“Is there a reason?”

“I cannot repeat it,” Snape growled impatiently. At her curious look he said, “Firstly, though it worked in the end, I did so despite my botching the spell and twisting the magic.” Snape thought back to the dark room, the phosphorescent pentagram glowing as though already activated, a beacon of darkness, beckoning with un-reined power. “I do not even know if it was my blood or the Chimrian’s that effected the magic. Or even a combination.”

“You used his pet?” She asked in surprise. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“It used me.”

“That would have complicated the spell all right.”

The memory of Kali’s screech when he nicked her still made the hair on the back of his neck tingle. Please don’t repeat it, Harry’s voice replayed to him, a plea from someone who could look into the darkness the way everyone else looked into a cellar.

Standing suddenly with the need to move, Snape whispered, “I cannot approach the dark that closely again.”

In a most serious tone, McGonagall said, “Forget entirely that I suggested it then. Harry needs you to come back to.”

With a flinch he said, “It may in the end be the only way…”

The Floo flared again and Tonks entered. “Well, I just came from Malfoy Manor.”

“And…?” Snape asked dangerously.

“I honestly believe they don’t know anything. Draco answered all my questions, that is, after he had stopped laughing hysterically at the notion of my errand. He wasn’t hiding anything, I’m quite certain.” She paced once along the end of the table and stopped before the much taller Snape. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything positive to report. The entire Auror staff and apprentices are out looking for him as well as every Weasley available. We are trying to keep this quiet if we can, the press are going to go bongo when they find out. I’d rather not put you through that, or Harry when he returns.”

Snape crossed his arms. “I appreciate that,” he stated. “If I were to help look, where would I best start?”

“We need you to stay here in case he contacts home.” At Snape’s deep frown she paused and argued, “In these situations if he gets any kind of opening to communicate someone will need to be here to receive it.” Tonks touched his arm. “I know that doesn’t sound like much, that it sounds like sitting and doing nothing, but it is extremely important. There are too many small ways to magically get a message out, many that have a short lifespan, and we cannot afford to miss it if we get that lucky.”

When Snape didn’t respond, Tonks went on, “If we don’t find a real trail by tomorrow, we’ll go to the press, because at that point we are going to need the public’s help. We are going to have to appeal to everyone who may have seen him. Fortunately, he is famous and anyone who saw him last night will easily remember the details of it.”

Snape acquiesced by sitting down, though he felt vaguely lightheaded doing it.

“Holding out, Severus?” Tonks asked in concern.

His only reply was a quiet scoff. Tonks took her leave after a shared frown with the headmistress. Snape rested his forehead hard on his hand again, feeling the weight of past actions he had chosen to forget until now.

McGonagall asked, “Have you eaten?” Snape replied with a very small shake of the head. “Well, I like to keep my strength up in a crisis, do you mind if I request something of your elf?” Snape waved her toward the door to the hall without looking at her.

She returned presently with a plate of beans and toast.

“You truly need not stay,” Snape repeated. “I know for certain that you have pressing duties.”

“They are unimportant. Not that I would have admitted that yesterday, mind you.” At his doubtful expression, McGonagall put down her fork and said meaningfully, “Unlike you, Severus, I have not repaid Harry for what he did. I cannot in fact imagine doing so. Standing vigil with you for a few hours is the least I can do.”

She picked up her fork and stabbed a few beans on the end of it. Snape, for his part, ate the bitter memory of mocking Harry’s godfather for being stuck in precisely this position.

Harry paced his cage back and forth a hundred times before relenting and sitting down to wait. Nothing happened for hours. The sunlight faded to grey shadow in the little window high on the wall, leaving him in uncertain dimness. He began to wonder if this wasn’t part of his apprentice testing somehow and started to relax and try to guess what was coming next, certainly not a snake, he expected.

Having exhausted every crazy idea for escape, he was resting in the corner when footsteps and a spill of light came down the steps at the other end of the rough, narrow space.

Harry’s brow furrowed as he recognized the man approaching.

“Well, Mr. Potter,” Rick Guilderchild said in suave greeting.

“Rick,” Harry grudgingly returned, remaining as he was on the floor.

“Ah, you remember me. I am so pleased by that.” He grabbed the bars and pressed his face through them. “Do you like my little nook? I had an expert make it, just for you.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Harry said, sounding as bored as possible.

“You would be the ungrateful sort,” Rick snorted as he stepped back and paced nervously.

“What do you want?” Harry asked as if not caring whether he got an answer.

“Oh I have what I want.” Rick grinned then and turned a sideways look at Harry. “You are missing a date, aren’t you? Tsk, tsk, and Tara so does not like to be stood up.”

“That isn’t what this is about, is it?” Harry’s bored intentions broke at the absurdity of that.

Rick laughed. “You should have stuck with Tonks. She was much less caring about a canceled date.” He waved his hand as though to dismiss Harry. “The elf will bring something to eat and anything else you might request…that won’t allow you out.” He stalked away back up the steps.

Harry gathered his scattered thoughts together. No prison was perfect. There had to be a way out. And by now everyone would be looking for him. But he would very much prefer to get out on his own than be subject to the humbling embarrassment of rescue.

While his eyes traversed the bars and the walls, top to bottom, he let his mind wander to generate ideas. When none came, he fingered the necklace with distaste and pulled on its seemingly thin links to try to break them. He woke up some time later with his face pressed into the stone floor, remembering only a flash and exquisite pain.

Early in the morning, Hermione and Ron arrived in the Floo in Shrewsthorpe. Snape still sat at the table, alone, as McGonagall had departed a few hours before to get some sleep.

“Morning, Professor,” Hermione said. “Is it all right if we wait here for any news? We were out all night looking and need to rest our feet but we can’t bear to go home and wait.”

Snape slowly lifted his head before gesturing abruptly at the other chairs across the table. Ron gave Hermione a worried look at the state Snape was in. Hermione took out a map of London to study, while Ron put his head on his arm to nap. A quarter of an hour later, Winky brought breakfast plates and set them down. Snape shoved his away. Winky caught it at the table edge before it could spill and took it away in silence.

After an hour of resting, the pair departed to return to the search. “It will turn out all right, sir,” Hermione said. “Harry is always very lucky, you know.”

“Fools and children,” Snape muttered cryptically. “And he is no longer a child.”

“Is it all right if we come back later?” Hermione asked carefully, ignoring Ron’s dissuading glare. When Snape waved his hand ambiguously, she said, “See you later then, sir.”

As they walked across the weekend quiet of the Ministry atrium, Ron said, “Snape didn’t look so good. With his hair all crazy, looked a bit like he used to.”

“Yeah,” Hermione agreed. “You know, I’d thought Harry had got more than his share out of the adoption, but seeing Snape just now…maybe I was wrong. Just as well Tonks told him to stay put.”

“Maybe that’s why he isn’t doing so good,” Ron commented. “I wouldn’t want to sit around and wait.”

Harry spent a cold night with a single blanket. He had talked the house-elf into a charmed chamber pot as well as a wash basin so he was at least basically comfortable. When he had tried to convince the elf that it should talk to his own elf Winky, it had begun banging its head on the bars. Harry had to tell it he had changed his mind and that he was perfectly happy there in the cage to get the elf to stop. Now in the dimness he thought that a good sign that meant the elf was tempted to help and had to punish itself for the temptation.

Bored, Harry had taken his shoelaces out of his shoes and thought about weapons or tools one might fashion from them. He imagined Lestrange sitting in Azkaban, collecting things from which to fashion a wand. Harry didn’t know how to make a wand. Vowing to learn the first chance he got, he unbraided the doubled over laces yet again and shook them straight. Picturing home with longing, he wondered what Snape was doing right then, as he was supposed to have left for Hogwarts Friday for a staff party.

Harry wondered if he had departed, assuming Harry was just out with friends. Harry dearly wished he had told Snape exactly what time he was coming home from the Ministry. The last minute present idea had turned out rather poorly. Apparently Rick had followed Tara from her flat, although Harry doubted Tara knew Rick was hanging around.

The elf brought a snack, making the tray materialize inside the bars with a snap of his fingers. His oversized eyes looked very worried.

“What’s your name?” Harry asked as calmly as possible. With its lips pressed tight together the elf shook its head and whined a little. “Do you know an elf named Dobby?” Same basic response except a bit disapproving. “So you’ve been ordered not to talk to me?” A nod. “Have you met Dobby?” Another nod, along with a frown. “Kind of a bad elf, I think,” Harry opined, guessing the creature’s thoughts. Another nod, a bit more emphatic. “Good elves always do as their masters say,” Harry commented. This time the house-elf didn’t respond, although he looked regretful as his ears drooped.

The elf must have heard something because it suddenly cocked its head and disappeared. Harry was just thinking of repeating some of Dobby’s comments about how much better off house-elves were with Voldemort gone, thinking maybe he could blur the notion of master a bit. Maybe he could try that when it brought dinner.

Ron and Hermione returned to Shrewsthorpe first thing the next morning at Hermione’s insistence. “I think Professor Snape needs looking after, honestly,” she said. Ron frowned and closed his mouth on a hundred arguments.

Snape stepped in as soon as they arrived. “I don’t suppose there is any news?” he asked, not sounding particularly hopeful.

Hermione shook her head. She didn’t want to explain how frustrated the Aurors had become with all their leads extinguished. Hermione honestly had thought she and the Weasleys had been given something to do just to get them out of the way, but when they had returned yesterday evening, Tonks had grilled them for details in a sadly desperate manner.

As soon as they sat down, Winky brought breakfast, big plates of steaming potatoes, bangers, toast and butter, and roasted tomatoes. She arranged them on the table and departed. Ron expressed utter delight and began eating with his usual vigor. Hermione looked across at Snape, staring blankly at a point beyond his plate. She had a feeling he hadn’t eaten at all since Harry had gone missing.

Swallowing past a lump in her throat, Hermione tried to think of something reassuring to say, but all of the optimism of yesterday morning had leeched away, pushed out by the ache in her feet from the miles of walking around London.

“The press will descend shortly,” Snape stated to no one in particular. “That will certainly improve the situation,” he sneered.

“Tonks seemed to think—” Hermione began.

“Yes,” Snape interrupted, “she seemed to think we needed a circus.”

“I don’t think there’s really any choice, Professor,” Ron piped in.

Hermione had not had the guts to say that. She hoped Ron didn’t say anything else such as how darkly negative the Aurors had grown as the last clues had been run down to dead-ends. She put down her fork and dragged Ron back to the Ministry as quickly as his plate emptied, needing to move.

Tonks, stuttering from too much pepper-up, gave them an assignment to go along the streets in Knightsbridge asking anyone out this early if they saw Harry Friday evening or night. Same as previous days, they were given copies of both Muggle and wizard photographs to show to people. Exhausted but energized by being given a concrete task, they headed back out to the streets.

Morning sun streaming in the far window woke Harry who rose slowly, stiff in the joints from the cellar chill. He stood up and paced to work out the kinks. Rick came down, fairly skipping with pleasure.

“Are you just going to keep me here?” Harry asked sarcastically.

“I have so many ideas for what I’d like to do to you, that I just can’t choose between them. I will soon. Have patience,” Rick assured him.

“You broke up with Tara,” Harry said, disgusted.

“She tossed me. Got some odd ideas from somewhere. Seemed to think she could get by without me. That dates could be nicer than I am, more attentive.” Rick’s mood had shifted severely to unhinged.

Rick stepped closer to the bars where Harry stood in his cage. Harry carefully avoided giving away that he was considering snatching his hand out to grab the man and perhaps pull his head forward into the bars as the elf had done to punish itself.

His captor did lean just a little farther forward as he said, “I own Tara. Every bit of her success was my doing. She’s ignoring that. Pretending. Parades you around like a prize…I was almost satisfied with that for a while, I have to say, given how pathetic it looked.” Rick gave a queer laugh. “Especially since you were too dimwitted to even see it.” Harry must have given away his thoughts of doubt, because Rick sneered, “Yes, you aren’t dumb, are you? Just don’t get around much apparently. Still living in a cupboard in your head or something?”

Harry forced his gaze to harden. It was true that he did not like what Rick was saying, that denials didn’t come to mind as easily as he would have liked. Harry, pretending more distress at that, leaned heavily on the cage.

“Poor Little Potter…finally the seeing the tru—”

Harry snapped a hand out through the bars, just brushing Rick’s Italian sport coat before a jolt of paralysis froze him and he sank to the floor, the world tilting helplessly around him until it fell still when his cheek rested on cold, gritty stone. Something snarled and skittered in the darkness beyond his vision before falling still as though to avoid detection.

Rick had jumped back, but he stepped forward immediately and crouched on the other side of the cage. “You can’t take any significant action, Potter. Didn’t I tell you this was created just for you? You can’t Disapparate, you cannot strike out. You fooled me there, however. Not many people manage that. Not many at all.” He stood then and brushed his suit flat. “I have to be at the club soon, acting normal. I will see you this afternoon.”

That prospect didn’t appeal much to Harry. Drawing upon his frustration, he used the bars to pull himself to his feet with an extreme effort of will against insipid weakness. “What? You’re just walking away? Let’s just settle this now.” Pleased with how strong that came out, he put on an appropriately challenging face in time for Rick’s turning around.

Rick ran his hand over his coat front. “This is an Armani. I don’t want to get blood on it.”

“It would be yours if you did,” Harry said.

“No. I like having you here to toy with. I like not worrying you are out messing with my possessions. I’m not ready to give that up to short-lived satisfaction just yet.”

The door to the cellar closed and a half a minute later a door farther away. Growling to himself, Harry stalked to the corner and with a groan settled down in it.

Harry limbs continued to vibrate from the jarring spell that had incapacitated him. The odd snarl he had heard reminded him of standing in the pentagram. He assumed that at the moment of the curse engaging, he was sensing the Dark Plane again, but this time with no Device except his own mood.

Harry chewed his lip as he meditated on that in the dank silence of his prison. The book said that his vision of that plane existed outside normal distances. Could he convince one of these creatures to take a message for him, he wondered. The idea had an appeal in that Rick certainly would not expect it. But his severe aversion to the creatures would be a problem. He had no desire to owe them anything. Better to owe Rick.

Ron and Hermione had never spoken to so many Muggles in so few days. They were nearing the end of one of the last streets leading to the underground stop Harry, lacking a spot to Apparate from, should have departed from after he rendezvoused with this Tara person who had brought Harry gift wrapping. Hermione wanted to meet this mysterious person whom Harry had never mentioned. She thought that she should have asked for a photo of her as well as she pulled Harry’s out for the hundredth time and showed it to a small round man busily carrying plastic crates of drink bottles into an incredibly small shop.

“Good morning. I wonder if you could help me…” Hermione began tiredly. The man stopped and looked down at the photograph she held out. “Did you happen to see this young man Friday evening or night?”

The man shook his head and hefted another crate. They didn’t look heavy but maybe the man had moved too many already. Inside the shop a similarly shaped woman yelled, “What they want, Elmer?”

“Lookin’ fer someone,” he yelled back to her, even though they were only five feet apart at that point, about as far apart as one could get inside the shop. “See anything Friday night, Gladys?”

She waved a hand in the air as though fanning away a fly. “No. Oh… that funny lamp from the box at the kerb. Show them that, Dear,” she yelled, which at least made some sense as he was all of ten feet away at the pavement now, hefting another crate.

“They don’t care ’bout no lampshade,” he grumbled. “Lookin’ for some boy, they is.”

Ron and Hermione considered each other with shared pain. There wasn’t much else on the street, but Hermione started to back away and thank the man, saying they needed to move on.

The lady inside was bent down over a large pile of wrinkled printouts. “Nice paper though… think I’ll save it for Christmas,” she said, pounding ferociously on a small calculator as she flipped through the crispy invoices.

Hermione froze, mid-step. “Can we see the, uh, lampshade?”

Ron looked very miserable as Hermione held up to the sunlight a sliver of the gold-tinted glass from the fancy low-expansion cauldron Harry had purchased that night. And half an hour later, after the Aurors had gleaned what they could, she gingerly placed the box on the desk in the drawing room in Shrewsthorpe. Ron had flinched from that half of the errand, so Hermione had sent him home to sleep. She wished for his support, but not his witnessing, as Snape reacted to the package. He beat out Ron for misery as he carefully placed one of the larger curved pieces of glass on the table before him before collapsing back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

After a very drawn out minute Snape said, “Fancy a bit of dark magic, Ms. Granger?”

“No, sir,” she immediately replied, then wondered what he meant by that. She didn’t want to ask, though, since he was making her quite uneasy, to the point she wondered how in the world Harry got along with him.

He sighed and quietly commented, apparently to himself, “I thought not.” He pulled himself together and said, “You took this to the Ministry, I assume?” At her nod he waved her away.

She went, thinking at that moment he looked capable of literally anything. She stopped at the doorway, though, trying to find something worthwhile and encouraging to say. Snape’s eyes came up to scrutinize her without his head moving.

“Harry always gets out of these jams, you know,” she said, finding herself worried about Harry in a much broader sense than she previously had. Snape didn’t reply, just returned to fingering the petal shaped shards of gold glass.

Hermione let herself out. She didn’t see Snape force the snaking curved edge of the shattered glass to bite the skin of his finger, nor did she hear the answering screech of Kali in her cage directly above him.

Harry spent the very long day alternating between sit-ups and push-ups as well as makeshift exercises using the immovable bars of his cage. He spent a long time reexamining the mortar of the stone wall while the light on it was good. It was freshly reworked and harder than the stones it surrounded, especially given that his options for scrapping tools were a fingernail and a tiny bit of chipped stone.

Sitting down in the corner in the one spot where no pointy things pressed into his back, Harry made himself again recount every conversation he had had with Tara where Rick may have been mentioned, even in passing. The list of facts from this was short: Rick worked at a bank with his father, he moved in the same circles of people that Harry had met at a few parties. He thought much of himself and his family but not in the pureblood way of a Malfoy, more in a money-is-power way of a Muggle.

There must be a way out of here, Harry thought. He imagined that if Snape knew he were missing he could repeat the Beacon Spell. Immediately the chill from the pentagram device filled him and Harry dearly hoped Snape did not attempt it. Harry would sit patiently here for rather a long time to have his guardian avoid that. Of course, Snape could not know that.

Harry dangled his laces out straight and one at a time, let them snake onto the floor to form a five-sided star. It didn’t feel very active. He tried again, slowly lowering the laces neatly while imagining the pentagram in the upstairs room at home, how it felt like a gate to another place, and this time felt a wavering chill. He studied the feel of it, closed his eyes and listened to the distant scratching and scuffling. There was a world there that connected to the gateway at the house. He wasn’t sure at all how to use that notion, but it gnawed at him given he had no other distractions.

Like playing a child’s game, Harry picked up the laces and tried again, experimenting with what mental modes seemed to create the most chilling results. Perhaps not a message, perhaps there was a way out of this prison in a direction his keeper never imagined and perhaps Harry could tolerate it given what was at stake.

The next shoelace pentagram made Harry’s skin prickle and itch horribly, but Harry—imagining Snape considering the same kind of device—sat and examined it clinically, felt meticulously around its smoky aural edges, felt along the power-bars of the structure of it which seemed to extend into dimensions that had nothing to do with the flat surface generating them. He put his hand into the Device to see what happened, moved it around, needing badly to fully understand this as rapidly as possible.

What is this?” McGonagall demanded when Snape had ignored the same question the first go-’round.

Snape was kneeling, precisely rechalking the floor in the upstairs room. McGonagall had had difficulty finding him at first. The elf had to tell her where he was. “You will not do this,” she snapped vehemently. Snape ignored her and began studiously sharpening a new cylinder of phosphorescent chalk on a board with sandpaper tacked to it.

“Severus!” She snatched the chalk out of his hand and gripped it tight enough that the sharp edges crumbled.

He considered her with a hooded expression. “So you will do the spell, I suppose?” he intoned.

She seemed to consider that, then glanced at the diagram on the floor, then finally considered the chalk on her glow-dusted fingers.

Snape said almost in a taunt, “It is a well-tuned node. When Harry stands here he senses the Dark Plane.”

She exhaled, apparently in release of a long-held breath. “No one is doing the spell.” She pulled out her wand and obliterated the lines on the stones, scattering coal and chalk dust to the edges of the room.

With chilling calm Snape said, “I do believe it was your idea, originally. Was it not?”

“I believe I misunderstood the spell. Come, Severus.” She gestured to the door. “All other avenues have not yet been exhausted.”

They sat down at the dining room table, the crystal ball she had brought perched between them on a chipped, black ceramic stand.

Hands clasped before him, Snape said, “This is well beyond exhausted avenues.”

“Give me a chance, Severus. I did rather well at this in my own school days.”

Taunting now, Snape returned, “So well that this is the first time you have taken out the quartz orb since then.”

“Perhaps. How did you know that?”

“I guessed,” he scoffed.

She held up her hand for quiet and then passed it over the sphere three times. Snape waited while she peered into the light-speared depths of the orb, first leaning forward with her nose close, then back as though relaxed.

“See Harry yet?” Snape mocked when a decent time had passed.

“No, but I think I see where I dropped that earring of my grandmother’s I couldn’t find.” At Snape’s derisive look, she said, “At least I’m getting something. Sybil’d be telling us Harry is—” She cut herself off.

Snape crossed his arms. “Yes, do go on,” he sneered.

“Well, she always sees gloom. Can’t help it apparently.”

Fingering the slithery chain around his neck for the hundredth time, Harry wondered yet again if he could perform an Animagus transformation out from under it. It was a risky thought. The necklace contained magic powerful enough to limit Harry’s own and it was solid links of metal and far too short to accommodate his Gryffylis form. Harry flinched as he imagined getting garroted by its indestructible links. Frustrated and with nothing to take it out on, he returned to sit-ups.

Rick appeared in the evening, disgustingly buoyant. “Want to see?” he asked as though bursting with needing to share something. When Harry didn’t react, Rick unfolded the copy of the Daily Prophet that he had hidden behind his back and held it up for Harry to see.

Missing! read the very large headline. At the top of the column was printed, Family, friends, have not seen Wizard Hero for three days. Below was a photograph in front of his house showing Logan and Rodgers interviewing Snape and someone who looked to be Elizabeth. The scene had a lot of movement in it considering the setting. Snape turned from Logan and found the camera with a fierce, determined expression.

This cheered Harry rather a lot. Everyone, but everyone was looking for him. Rick pulled the paper around and read out loud, “Distressed girlfriend Elizabeth Peterson states that Harry is not the type to run off without leaving word. Now isn’t that interesting…”

“She’s just a friend. A neighbor,” Harry stated.

“Really?” Rick laughed mockingly. “What will Tara think when she reads this?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not lying. My guardian or Elizabeth herself will explain,” he said calmly, making Rick frown. “You’ll be amused to hear that her father severely disapproves of me.”

After a long pause Rick said, “You are joking of course.”

“No. But you don’t have to believe me.”

“Tara’s parents must have loved you,” Rick said.

Harry wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t say that. As bored as he was, he wished Rick were still off somewhere else.

“They liked me a lot. At first. Fickle sort they were.” Rick sounded angry now. “You don’t have a problem with fickle people, do you? Everyone loves you.”

Tiredly, Harry said, “No, they don’t.”

Challengingly, Rick demanded, “Name one person who doesn’t.”

“Draco Malfoy. Everyone in Azkaban. That’s a lot of people.” Bored with this meaningless conversation, Harry turned away and sat against the wall.

“I’m not done with you yet.”

“I’m done with you,” Harry said.

“We’ll see about that,” Rick muttered and stalked off.

Harry dearly wished Rick had left the paper behind. His memory of the photograph was pretty good, but he wanted to see it again. He wanted to see Snape looking ready to blast through an army of Trolls to come after him. It made him feel gratified and whole, even as he stared at the unyielding bars before him. When the noises upstairs quieted, Harry yet again prowled and shook every bar mount for any sign of weakness in his cage.

By dinner, the Snape dining room was full of guests—Harry’s friends attracted by the article. Snape wandered down and was startled by how many more had arrived since only an hour before. Suze gave him a shy smile of greeting when his eyes fell down to her. The room became quiet as they noticed him standing in the doorway and the newcomers murmured, “Professor,” in greeting. He balanced between annoyance and a kind of uplift at knowing he didn’t suffer in worry alone.

The door knocker sounded and Snape moved to answer it, beating out Hermione, who had apparently appointed herself hostess. Hermione retreated to her seat beside the hearth with a blush. Tara was at the door, speaking to her mother beside her. “I’ll owl you when I need you to come Floo me home,” she was saying. “Professor,” she turned to Snape. “May I wait here for news?”

“Everyone else is,” he said tiredly and gestured for her to come in. Tara’s mother gave her daughter a hug before Tara followed Snape inside.

“Oh,” Tara said at the door to the dining room. Everyone turned to curiously consider the newcomer.

Snape gave her a light push with two fingertips. “Have a seat, Ms. Terrance,” he intoned before departing to the sanctuary of the drawing room.

Tara made her way through the crowded chairs to the corner beside a bushy-haired girl. “Hi,” Hermione said. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so,” Tara replied, glancing around the room a little uneasily.

“I can introduce you,” Hermione offered. “How do you know Harry?”

“We’ve gone out a few times.”

Hermione found this very interesting. “You’re dating Harry?”

“Yes. What do you mean by that?” Tara asked. Hermione grabbed up the copy of the Prophet to stash it away, at the same moment Ron grabbed it up to show it to Tara. “I’ve seen that,” Tara said to cut them off.

“Oh.” Ron sounded disappointed. “That’s Elizabeth over there,” he said, pointing her out by the window. Tara considered the other young woman before shrugging. Ron said, “I don’t remember you from Hogwarts…”

“I went to a day school in London.”

“Huh,” Ron said, “You and Elizabeth are the only two witches I’ve ever met who didn’t go to a wizardry and witchcraft school.”

Tara started to speak, but then simply said, “I went where my parents wanted me to go.”

“That would explain why you know how to dress so nicely,” Ginny offered from beside Ron, sounding more than a little jealous.

“The average witch or wizard does have trouble getting that quite right,” Tara agreed before falling broodingly silent.

The Floo flared and Candide stumbled out, obviously in a hurry. “My,” she breathed at the group. “Where is Severus?” she asked.

“Drawing room,” Elizabeth supplied and started to stand to show the woman where, but Candide had already gone into the hall.

“Severus, why didn’t you owl?” she demanded in the drawing room. “I thought you were at the school.”

“Something came up, obviously,” he snarled.

“Well.” She looked Snape’s disheveled self over once again. “Anything I can do?”

“Do you have any ideas where Harry might be?”

“No. I wish I did.”

“Then no, I don’t believe you can help,” he stated dismissively.

She stepped over to him. “Severus, I’m sorry. What happened?”

Reluctantly, Snape explained, even about his delaying. She plunked down in a nearby chair and sighed loudly at the end of it. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “Like you said, he’s run off before. Are you certain he’s in trouble, even now?”

“He would not run off this long, for any reason.”

“Okay, so you’ve gone through his list of enemies…the ones not in Azkaban?”

“Many, many times,” Snape replied tiredly. “There is nothing you can do. You should go.”

“Severus—”

“If you wish to see me at my worst, by all means, do stay,” he sneered.

“Severus, I just—”

“There is nothing you can do,” he snarled this time.

With an annoyed frown and roll of the eyes she stalked off. “I’ll be at my parents. Owl me if anything happens, or if you do want company.”

Harry curled up in the dimness, his arm for a pillow, thinking that if it were not time for bed, at least he could pretend. Candles flickered feebly in a wall niche across from him, which kept utter darkness at bay but not so much to keep him awake.

Despite the hard floor and the thin blanket wrapped around him, he fell into a light dose, to be awoken by dinner sliding through a gap at the bottom of the cage. A crossbar reinforced the gap, so Harry had already dismissed it as a weak point. Rick stalked away without comment. Harry thought it a little strange that the house-elf had not brought the food, but it woke his stomach, which hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous day.

The meal was a little salty, so he drank all the water in the pewter carafe, even though it tasted metallic. He considered the empty jug, wondering at its potential as a weapon whenever Rick returned. The hammered metal seemed to swell and shrink as he studied it. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them but the effect only grew worse. An ear-pounding clattering let some part of his mind know that he had dropped the carafe, but he could not remember letting go of it. The suddenly colorful floor heaved the same way, making him instinctively duck down to avoid being tossed by it. His hands told him it was still and solid, despite his eyes telling him otherwise, a distressing disconnect.

Harry crawled backward frantically until he cracked his head against the stone wall. The bars were undulating, breaking loose and snapping at him with dragon heads that had spouted from their ends. He fought them off with his hands until he was too exhausted to lift them and fell unconscious.

McGonagall sat in the drawing room, keeping Snape company, an increasingly difficult task. Snape paced incessantly and tugged regularly at his now-wild hair. A screech brought him to a halt. They both ran to the stairs where Snape fiercely ordered everyone back into the dining room.

In Harry’s room McGonagall shut the door behind her and held her hand on the knob. Kali screeched again, although it ending in a mewling. She fluttered inside her cage, throwing herself against the bars. Worried she would injure herself, Snape opened it wide. The Chimrian launched herself out of the cage but fluttered to the floor, unable to fly. Her head twitched from side to side as though startled by things the two of them could not see.

Moving very slowly so as to not disturb her farther, Snape reached down to pick her up, ignoring McGonagall’s admonishment. But Kali was beyond them, it seemed, and didn’t notice who was holding her. She screeched weakly again and he stroked her vivid violet back to calm her. He closed his eyes and cradled Kali with immense care as he took in the implication of her state.

“Now I must do the spell,” Snape stated. He turned to place Kali on the bed.

McGonagall was upon him. “Severus—” she began to argue, obviously troubled with needing to.

Snape held up the Chimrian. “Don’t you see this?” he asked, voice unsteady.

“I do. And believe me…” she paused for control. “It pains me immeasurably. But if the dark abyss is so close, it cannot be risked. Always there are much larger things at stake, Severus.”

Snape cradled Kali when she cried again, stroking her until she quieted. “It is not your place to decide this,” he said angrily.

“Harry would not want you to risk it, no matter what was happening to him,” she stated firmly. “I know that for certain and I’ll defend that in his absence in the face of your denial of it.”

“I must…do something,” Snape whispered.

“Calming his pet will help him,” she said. “Their moods are tied both ways.”

Not only had the Chimrian calmed, it had fallen asleep in the crook of Snape’s arm. He stood still for a long while, staring at the trunks stacked in the corner of the room. “You were right.”

“Was I? About what?”

With a strange smirk Snape said, “About the things happening to him driving a parent mad.”

McGonagall stepped closer and brushed his housecoat sleeve with her fingers. “You’ve done marvelously, Severus, and you must realize how hard it is for me to say that to you.”

Snape laughed in a huff, but fell dark again. “I made a grave error this time. It may not matter at all.”

Fiercely, she said, “All of it always matters.” She stepped away, flustered by her own vehemence. “Keep hold of the animal as long as it will let you. That will help him.”

When McGonagall returned to the room later, she found Snape asleep, propped up on Harry’s pillows with Kali curled on his chest. Loath to disturb him, she tiptoed out and closed the door with a quiet click.

Morning came with a mixture of bad and good senses. Harry felt both queasy and sick as well as oddly relaxed and rested. Rick stood beyond the bars, looking amused. “You should have seen yourself. That was really quite brilliant.” When Harry didn’t even so much as flick his eyes to his captor, Rick went on, “Ever have that? It’s called Raving Splendor, by the purveyor, who requests that he remain nameless. Bloody popular with the dance crowd.”

Harry wished he could empty his sour stomach on Rick’s shiny brown shoes, but they were beyond the blasted cage. Barring that statement, he did not wish to move at all, since that would make his brain slosh painfully in his skull.

“Effing brilliant, watching The Great Harry Potter crawling around like a panicked cockroach.” Rick laughed breathily, bent down and pushed a plate and another pewter carafe through the bars. “Here, have some breakfast, on the house,” Rick invited cheerily before skipping away.

The dining room had emptied out overnight of everyone except McGonagall. Snape sat across from her before an untouched plate of breakfast scramble and toast, Kali curled in his lap. The Chimrian also refused to eat, even the softest strip of bacon fat from McGonagall’s plate. She turned her tiny fox-head upward to Snape and whined at him. In response Snape pulled her more comfortably into the crook of his arm.

Harry sat miserably in the corner of the dank cellar, his whole body aching. He longed for solid sleep on a real bed with a real pillow, longed for it dearly. The chill that filled his bones from the cold stone had become a constant, needling companion, as had the feeling of defeat that he found himself unable to will away. To be caught and toyed with like this by an incompetent wizard after everything he had managed to survive made him groan miserably into the cloudy greyness leaking in the small window. Depressing helplessness made him pound his forehead on his bent knee. It did not help that his only current prospect for getting himself out involved interacting with demons.

Snape’s words returned to him about not letting his guard down. Harry had failed in that, he supposed with a sigh, even though he had only been walking along an ordinary street just steps from an underground entrance. He certainly couldn’t have been expected to see this coming, he argued defensively, even to himself. He imagined Snape’s disappointment when he finally did get home and hoped it was tempered somewhat by relief at having him back safely.

Harry managed to doze part of the morning despite his discomforts. When he awoke, thirsty and hungry, a tray and carafe sat just inside the cage. Harry never imagined before what torment could be caused by such a simple object as that carafe. His fuzz-covered tongue and hairy throat cried out so for water, but he simply could not risk drinking it. The cool water within it had caused droplets of enticing sweat to form on the outside of it. He lifted the pitcher and licked these off, tasting dust and metal. He carefully placed it back down to wait for more to form.

Voices roused Harry from a dull state that may have constituted meditation in one inclined to it. The cellar door opened and footsteps, two sets, made their way down accompanied by Rick’s entertaining voice. “I do believe you will be pleased,” Rick was saying. Harry watched as the person he would least like to see in the entire world at that moment stepped across the cellar, surprise flickering under his permanent scowl.

Draco Malfoy came to a halt well shy of the bars.

“Come, come,” Rick invited him closer.

“You do have him,” Draco said in clear amazement. “Quite a catch,” he opined with what Harry heard as unease.

“Eff off, Malfoy,” Harry muttered.

“Smashing, isn’t he? Just a charm,” Rick prattled on happily. “And a real enemy, Potter, you were right,” he said, indicating his companion. “Railed against you all the way here about how you destroyed everything he used to have. Truly despises you to the depths of his soul…what he has of one anyway.”

Draco stepped up to the cage. “How did you manage…?”

“Oh, well. I admit, I spent a few pounds. Show him the Gratatorq, Potter.” When Harry didn’t react, he clarified, “The chain.”

Harry, having nothing else to do, hooked a thumb under the oily necklace and held it up from his collar.

Rick went on. “A pretty penny for that, I’ll admit. Potter looks like such hell because he can’t resist testing and retesting its power because he’s too uncultured to understand how it works.”

Draco said a bit snidely, “So you didn’t actually best him.”

“Well,” Rick began defensively. “What does it matter if I bought a bit of an advantage…?”

Harry, seeing lingering horror in the bright blue depths of Draco’s eyes, determined that he might just be able to get at him. At least he was freer than the house-elf. “Does to Draco,” Harry commented.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that, Potter the rotter,” Draco snipped back.

“Gloating Draco? Just because you once beat me in a duel without extra help…”

Draco blinked at that, his mind working that discrepancy. “Did you?” Rick asked Draco with great interest. “Do tell where you learned to duel?”

After a significant hesitation Draco said, “My father taught me. Of course.”

“Ah, yes, Malfoy…” Rick said, “that name does ring a bell somewhere.”

Both Harry and Draco favored Rick with disgusted expressions, neither of which the man noticed. “Of course you have heard of my father,” Draco snapped.

“Have I? Well, yes, of course, such an old family, Malfoy.” Rick still looked thoughtful.

Harry, unable to take it, demanded, “Why do you think I hate him so?” From his seat on the floor, Harry gestured at the blond young man. “His father was a Death Eater. More than a Death Eater, he was Voldemort’s Lieutenant.”

Rick now gave Draco an alarmed looking over.

“Aye,” Harry muttered.

Draco in return gave Rick a smug smile.

“Who did you think would be my biggest enemy?” Harry snarled at his captor.

Draco looked over the cage with a keen eye. “Really quite interesting. Is the Torq absolute?” He sounded as though he were shopping for one.

With crossed arms and a superior tilt of the head, Rick replied, “If you mean will it kill him in a most graphically horrible way should he manage to escape? Yes.”

Harry bore the bright blue eyes again, unable to gauge them. He pushed himself to his feet with effort and staggered over to them. Draco actually stepped back from him, making Harry wonder how wild he appeared at this point.

“Everyone is looking for you,” Draco said.

Rick laughed, “Yes, ghastly fun, isn’t it? I usually only make headlines in the financial pages when Dad’s bank has an announcement. The front page, even of just the Prophet, is much more entertaining.” He put his face up to the bars, letting the metal press into his cheeks. “Poor orphan Potter, no family to rely on, no one to give him a leg up in life,” he said with a pout.

Harry swung out to smack him and actually managed a weak slap before the necklace dropped him to his knees. He fought it, with every ounce of will he had, he fought the muscle quivering effects of it and lunged again at his captor, who despite his apparent proclivity for buying magic, did know how to use a wand and an instant later Harry was tossed back by a scythe of flame.

Back heaving against the searing pain across his chest, Harry didn’t get up again right away. He did lift his head so he could to favor Rick with a dark look of hatred, a calculated one that he kept from overwhelming him. It worked. He didn’t hear anything scrambling in the dark around him, although the notion of letting the things loose to do as they wished, if that were possible, was sounding more and more appealing, just to get this over with.

Rick sneered, “You don’t learn, do you Potter?”

“Stubborn idiot,” Draco agreed. “Always has been. Same stupid mistakes over and over. Tiring really.” With a forced smile, he said, “I have to admit that, despite the amusement of seeing Potter reduced to this, I really do need to return home for an important luncheon. Mother will have my head if I’m late. I’m sure you understand.”

Harry rolled his eyes and scoffed as he patted the seared skin beneath a blackened slice in his shirt.

Rick apparently was not ready to lose his audience. “Must you? I could give him a wand and you two could duel. I’d like to see that.”

“Perhaps next time. I think Harry has…found a better teacher than he had before our previous duel.” Draco turned to leave without looking back at Harry, who desperately wished to know if there was a message hidden in that. “If you could show me out?” Draco asked, sounding haughty and bored.