Phoenix Rising, Phoenix Falling

There were a limited number of islands on the western side of England.  Some were easy to rule out because of their size or location, but that did not make the Dark Lord’s task any easier.  Time was working against him, and the feverish enjoyment he had felt while hunting Harry had begun to wear thin.  Now every second lost was more danger to his life, and he could feel the pressing threat of death on his heels as the map of islands became smaller, more specific.  He had only a few guesses to make, and it would take time for him to go from a known location to fly to where the boy was.  

He could feel victory within his grasp.  The boy would not have been able to hold him off if he had not wasted time by enjoying himself in the chase.  The boy looked smaller than he had the last time Voldemort had seen him.  His skin had been almost translucently pale in the fluorescent light of the underground train, and his glasses were large on his thin, drawn face.  He had made the mistake, yet again, of underestimating the boy when he was alone and weak.  He hadn’t thought him capable of Apparition without his wand.  Few wizards were powerful enough to do it.

Now he was cursing himself, and the boy, because he could see through Harry’s poor eyesight the falling rain and the raging sea that lay just beyond the cliffs.  Words of the seer drifted through his mind, the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…   The old seer had sobbed as he had ripped the prophecy out of her.  Her robes had become wet with tears and blood that dripped heavily down her puffy face, but that had done nothing to quell the Dark Lord’s anger as it came out of her.  The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… She had begged Voldemort to spare her, had renounced her affiliation with Dumbledore and the school as quickly as she could, as all cowards did.  She had begged the Dark Lord to take a prophecy in exchange for her life, but he could see that she was a charlatan outside of her one extraordinary prediction.  The smell of whiskey and the sight of her red, wet face disgusted him. The power hidden shall bring an end to his reign, the power unveiled shall bring glory to the Dark Lord…  She was a weak witch in every way, that was obvious.  Even after his death, the memory charm Albus Dumbledore had placed on her had not been disrupted.  He tore through it as easily as ripping spider silk, oblivious to the way her eyes rolled back in her head at the agony of it.  He could hear the prophecy whispered through that woman’s mouth in her memories, but the hoarse voice of prophecy was nothing like her quivering pleas for mercy.  It was ringing and sure as if it came from the Hall of Prophecy deep within the Department of Mysteries…   For the old world will burn from the fire of two phoenixes, but not one alone…  Standing in the dusty remains of the old Headmaster’s office he came to a full understanding of the depth of the old man’s deception.  Looking to the seat where he had once sat, he imagined that Albus Dumbledore was sitting there as he always had been before he had been cast down, with blue eyes twinkling merrily behind shining moon shaped glasses.  When they had sat together in the halls of school, nothing had ever been given away behind those sharp eyes.

They had frightened him when he was a boy, although he had never been able to admit it.

 For shared in common shall be their power, and shared in common shall be their death.

A millennium one phoenix will reign, a millennium one phoenix will receive.

The water around Harry was shockingly, refreshingly cold.

It felt good against his burning, feverish skin for a second, but when it entered his lungs, it had the bite of a dementor’s kiss.  The ocean was a force of magic all its own, swaying powerfully and dangerously in the storm, and it overpowered Harry easily.  He swallowed a mouthful of salt water as soon as he dived below the moving, dark mirror of the surface.  There was no chance to rise to the surface as the waves sucked him under and pulled him into the riptide.  He was away from the sharp rocks of the cliff, which could have killed him immediately, but in the middle of a stormy sea, death was just as sure and painful.

His heavy coat which had accompanied him for so long over the years was waterlogged and heavy, dragging him down to the sea floor as well as pushing him head over heels as wave after wave shoved and pulled and sucked at him.  In the pitch black ocean, all Harry knew was the cold weight of salt water in his lungs.

Drowning was different from being stabbed, tortured or cursed.  He’d learned to tough out those pains, unbearable as they seemed to be, with a certain underlying confidence that he’d make it out alive.   Alone in the ocean, at the mercy of his wet cloak and the storm, he breathed in saltwater and knew he was going to drown to die.

Hundreds of feet above the storm tossed ocean, a pale figure all in black was impervious to the dark clouds, wind and rain.  His serpent-like red eyes were panicked and rolling, his lips curled in an ugly snarl.  He dove down through the rain like a hawk intent on his prey.  The ocean rose in challenge to him when he broke the boundary of the dark waters.  The stormy winter waters threw wave after wave at him, and closed around him like a roar, but he did not feel the waves or the cold.  He felt only the distance between himself and the slim, battered figure unconscious near the ocean floor.  

The sea might not have been able to stop his entrance, but it hated his presence.  The waves shoved at him with all the force thousands of miles of currents and hurricane-like winds could muster.  It pulled the boy further and further away.  Only rarely had a strong winter storm had to give up one of its drowning victims.  It resisted giving one up now.

 Voldemort knew that he had to reach the boy, like his body and mind had been decimated again, and he was a simple ghoul barely capable of coherent thought.  He felt the piece of his soul in the water and knew it was going to drown to death if he could not reach it first.  His wand had never left his side, but his magic did not draw on the elder wand to reach out to Harry.  It was something brighter, hotter, purer than the magic drawn out of a wand.  It pulsed dangerously beneath the waves and around Voldemort.  Colorless, shapeless, heatless, but living and throbbing with power, the magic that had grown so powerful inside of Voldemort reached out across the waves and grabbed hold of the boy. 

Voldemort was reaching out desperately, and Harry’s magic was responding weakly, but connected, always connected.  Deeper and deeper underneath the surface of the waves their connection pulled the Dark Lord.  He moved towards his horcrux through the currents and weight of thousands of pounds of water and when he reached out a pale hand through the dark water, Harry’s own pale hand was the only thing visible.

He reached him 

Escape was the next thing, but it was no hard thing, not when his living horcrux was in his grasp and the elder wand was eagerly waiting for his command.  No other wizard could aparate underneath the waves of the ocean, but for a wizard as great as he, the difference between air and saltwater was nothing.  He had been the brightest wizard of his age and he understood the complex laws and mathematics behind apparition.  He only had to think of where to go, where to take his prize, and the wand seemed to do the rest for him.  

The two of them arrived at Malfoy manor at two in the morning, on January 1st, drenched in ocean water and ice cold.  Translucently pale and in soaked black robes, they were mirror images of each other as they arrived.  Voldemort was nearly a foot taller but he was bent over to Harry’s level with the warm glow of the fireplace on their backs. He was squeezing Harry’s left wrist, where he’d first taught hold of the boy, and holding him with his wand hand around the back of his neck. 

Resuscitating the boy was the first thing he had to do, and he drew his elder wand to do it.

Harry woke up in a room that had been emptied of all furniture except the wooden chair he was bound to.  There was a chandelier above him, shining dully in the windowless room.  It was fear that had woken him up, a panicked sense of enclosure and nausea building up in the back of his throat.  His eyes wanted to remain close.  They were heavy and as weak as his head was, which struggled to rise.  If he could close his eyes, maybe he could ignore this reality a little longer and lose himself in sleep.  But they wouldn’t close, not now that anticipation for whatever torture and misery was next kept Harry’s eyes glued to the door.  His head pounded sickly.  

He tried to move his bruised wrists in their chains but stopped immediately when the rough binding tightened on them.  His foot twinged when he moved it, but without weight on it it was an ignorable pain.  Looking down, his eyes moved along the hard wooden floor to markings close to him, chaotic and shallow.  Claw marks made by human hands.

This was where they took people to be tortured then.

It made sense.  Harry couldn’t be killed or have his soul compromised in any way, but the Dark Lord was inventive and cruel, and Harry had still defied him for the better part of a decade and killed his fellow horcruxes.

Anxiety drummed in his veins, along with a low and uncomfortable level of pain and sick nausea.  He didn’t know how long he sat there waiting.  He could feel… The Dark Lord was attempting to keep his emotions aloof from Harry, but he could feel it through their bond.  His good mood from the night before when Harry had spat out a lungful of saltwater had carried into the present.  He was jubilant and confident, if Harry closed his eyes he could see flashes of what he saw, pale outlines of him moving among his followers.  A table with a woman bound to it, laughter, servants hurrying out of his way, relieved to hear the Lord say a few kind words to them for once.  

He let Harry wait for him to come.

Sometime after an endless wait, he was suddenly there.  Standing with his wand out in the corner of the room and looking at Harry.  The air had turned cold and thin.  His steps in the space between him and Harry were measured and slow.  Harry’s breath sped up as he remained helplessly locked in place.  Lord Voldemort leaned down to examine the emotion in his enemy’s eyes.  

“Such an ungrateful way to look at your master.”  He grabbed Harry’s chin, so he could move the boy’s head side to side, examining him like livestock.  Harry strained to keep from moving, but couldn’t.  He wondered whether he could move fast enough to bite one of Voldemort’s fingers off.  “I suppose you are healthy enough.  No thanks to that cruel old man you worship.”

“You’re not my master,” Harry responded, yanking his chin out of Voldemort’s grasp.

Voldemort wiped the fingertips that had touched Harry onto his robes with cool disgust.  “I am your master, Harry.  Since the day my soul entered your body, you’ve been my property and servant, whether you’ve known it or not.  You might have been fooled by Dumbledore to believe you had a chance at defeating me, but that illusion has been shattered, and your hero has betrayed you.  Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

Harry spat out an uncreative obscenity.

Voldemort had thought long and hard about how he wanted to proceed with Harry.  Some things were off the table because of the circumstances that bound them together, but most things weren’t.  Harry’s defiance wasn’t something he could allow to continue.  Calmly, he pointed at the boy and said, “Crucio.”

After he was finished, he prodded the boy, who was again close to unconsciousness.  Voldemort could calculate with just about every person how much damage their body could withstand and how much pain their mind could take before lasting damage was done. 

It was obvious to him that Harry was close to the point of permanent damage after months on the run with little nutrition or sleep and frequent pain.  He had become gaunt instead of just skinny, and his green eyes were the brightest part of his pale face.  His injuries were not severe enough to need immediate attention.  Isolated, in pain and without any concrete sense of time, his will would be ground away until he would do what he had to for relief.  He was sure he could break him.

He knelt down in front of Harry, and wrenched his head up by his messy black hair.  He didn’t seem capable of looking away.  He enjoyed Harry’s attention and helpless hatred.  “I want you to call me master.  Can you say that?  Can you call me master?”  

The loathing in Harry’s eyes made it clear that this demand went against his very nature.  His words came out clear and strong.  “Fuck.  You.”

It might take a long time to make the boy desperate enough to submit, but the Dark Lord had nothing but time on his hands to spend enjoying his captured enemy.  It would be all the more satisfying in the end when he finally heard those sweet words coming from a reluctant mouth.   “Crucio!”   

“Sir!”  Harry raised his head when he heard the familiar chirp of a house elf’s voice.  It was the same one that had come once a day for the last four days.  She was ancient, wrinkled and tiny, even for a house elf, and she only came with water.  “You is needing to drink, sir!”

“Hello, Botchie.”  She had answered a few questions when he had asked the first day, but didn’t say much about anything he really cared about. She said eagerly that her masters were the Malfoy family, and that she was proud to serve them.  She had known Dobby but hadn’t ever suspected he could do something as awful as be a free elf.  She didn’t know or wouldn’t say what was going on outside. She didn’t know when Voldemort would stop by.

 He wanted to resist drinking the water, out of principle, but he suspected she’d be the one to suffer if she couldn’t get him to drink.  And he was thirsty.  “Is it morning?” 

“It is, sir.”  The small water bowl she held over his mouth was emptied within seconds, but it would be all he’d get.  No food. He knew exactly who had decided on such meager portions.

Voldemort had decided hunger and thirst would be an important component of breaking Harry’s will, so he hadn’t had anything besides a little trickle of water in the four days since he’d arrived.

“Thank you, Botchie,” he said and she bowed before she disappeared.  

There was no position to rest that wasn’t uncomfortable.  He had not been allowed to leave the small, stiff wooden chair he had first been tied in.  Sleep came to him mostly when exhaustion overwhelmed him or he passed out.  In the sunless, timeless room, days passed with varying quantities of boredom, pain and fear.  He was beginning to hate boredom most of all, although when he was in fear or pain he was convinced that was the worst of it, and longed for the long hours when absolutely nothing bad happened.  Bound to the chair starving and thirsty with a bloody foot and broken wrist, even boredom was a low level version of torture.

But it didn’t matter.  Voldemort could come and go as he pleased, mocking him and torturing him, but he’d never break.  Nothing else was good in the world anymore but Harry’s confidence in his own resolve.  The thought of continuing the vicious cycle of pain, fear and boredom for days, weeks or years overwhelmed him nearly to the point of tears, but there was something in him that had never questioned whether or not he could fulfill Voldemort’s simple request.  It was fundamentally incompatible with who Harry was.  He didn’t think he could call Voldemort master if he wanted to.

And, oddly, the torture was becoming more tolerable.  It still was intolerable, in the way the Cruciatus curse always was, and his nerves never became desensitized, but he was beginning to understand the nature of the spell, the same way he had begun to understand the shape of the Imperius curse after Alastor Moody’s imposter cast it on him time and time again.  

The Imperius curse was difficult to deal with for most people because obeying the command meant bone melting ecstasy, and defiance of the Imperius command was searing pain.  The Cruciatus curse was just pain, endless pain, as long as the caster wanted to inflict it.  Rather than relying on stubborn defiance to deal with it, it required a certain amount of patience to tolerate it, and the ability to compartmentalize the pain.  As a master of stubborn defiance and a failure at compartmentalization, handling the Imperius Curse came significantly easier to Harry.  And yet, dealing with Voldemort’s blithe and self-satisfied moods was somehow worse than the Cruciatus.

The door handle rattled, an unusual sign that had Harry startled.  Normally, Voldemort preferred to appear in the room silently and ominously.  He liked to make Harry wait before the pain began, either by starting an idle conversation or staring at him to let Harry’s anticipation build.  

If someone was coming through the door, maybe it could be...

Hope blossomed in his chest that he might be rescued, for just one moment.

“Look who it is !”  Hope crashed back down, replaced by a dull fear and hatred.  Bellatrix looked better than he could stand to see her.  Her cheeks were flushed healthily and she had lost the gauntness that Harry had seemed to absorb in the time since she’d escaped Azkaban.  She gasped like she was receiving a great present as she came into the room.  “Little, bitty, baby Potter!  It is you!”

His hatred for her felt like nausea rising in the back of his throat.  Did Voldemort know how specifically he hated this particular follower?  He remembered, not even months earlier, how the black haired witch had carved the word mudblood into Hermione's arms.  He remembered Hermione's screams as she resisted.  

“I never would have imagined I’d have the pleasure to see you here like this!”

Dobby lay stiff and cold in his arms.  Bellatrix Lestrange’s silver handled knife enveloped in his frail little body.  It had been Bellatrix Lestrange’s curse that had pushed Sirius into a doorway he couldn’t escape from. If he had lived a few more years, Sirius could have taken him away from the Dursleys and given him a real family.

“Master offers his apologies that he won’t be attending to you himself.  He’s busy with more serious matters.”

The witch was approaching him with a smile on her face, looking at him feverishly.  Her wand was held tightly, barely able to restrain herself from starting right away.

“He hopes I will be a worthy substitute.”

Harry was shocked by the Cruciatus curse when it happened.  If it hadn’t been for the torture he’d undergone for almost a week, he would never have understood the difference between Voldemort’s curse and Bellatrix’s.  It was like looking at two seemingly identical blacks, and realizing one of them was a dark gray.  He screamed so long his throat was hoarse.  He felt Bellatrix’s unrestrained blood lust and hatred for him in his bones.

It was worse that day.  Bellatrix was willing to put the time in that Voldemort didn’t care enough to and she didn’t notice when Harry came close to the edge of breaking.

The fifth time it started back up again, Harry thought he wouldn’t be able to take it.  Fantasies of what had happened to the Longbottoms and others who had been driven insane danced in his head.  Harry, mindless and blind, staring blankly at a wall for the rest of his life.  Never being able to stop screaming.

He needed… he needed something, anything to hold onto.  In his desperation for it, his broken wrists curled in against the chair, digging his numb fingernails into the wooden frame just so that he could feel anything at all.  He understood what purpose the claw marks on the floor had served.  He needed something to hold onto and it didn’t matter what.

His magic surged.  He felt static on his neck and an almost pleasant lurch in his center, like he was diving straight down on a broomstick.  Still, nothing moved in the stale and windowless room.  Bellatrix had not noticed, and Harry had not stopped screaming.

There was something foreign, but familiar, at the back of his consciousness and out of range of the Cruciatus curse.  It burned hot when Harry focused all his attention on it, but the shape of the magic was as familiar to Harry as his own patronus, since it had been with him almost since he’d been born.  It was magic, pure magic, and it called out to Harry.  The movement in his chest went faster and faster until...

The polished floor of the serene and quiet grand ballroom was luscious ebony that gleamed without a trace of mud or a scuffle of a shoe.  The ceiling was the enchanted image of the constellations Andromeda and Capricornus shifting slowly across the sky on a moonless night.  The six hexagonal walls were polished mirrors and they created the illusion of several black chairs beside a roaring fireplace.  Harry couldn’t see his own face, but his long pale fingers were visible as they occasionally turned the page of the tome he read.  Besides him, the room had only a large serpent, sleeping peacefully. 

Voldemort’s mind was a peaceful retreat.  Here, there was no Cruciatus curse.  Harry’s screams were like a song on the radio he had knowingly turned all the way down.   The rhythm with which he read and turned the pages was methodical.  Fascinated by the room and the book, Harry only began to hear the speculations and calculations in the Dark Lord’s mind as he became more restless.  Ministries, resistances, foreign interference, Hogwarts, Harry, Hallows... they washed Harry in a chaotic symphony of sensations, emotions and thoughts that he could not make sense of.  Voldemort snapped his book close.  He examined the Elder Wand he held carefully, and began to turn it in his hands as he sat there, lost in thought.

Harry opened his eyes when he realized Voldemort couldn’t hear the sound of his screaming anymore.  He was listening now, turning up the metaphorical radio of Harry’s thoughts, touching the connection that lay between him with his magic.  

“Harry,” Bellatrix was saying softly.  Her large dark eyes were inches away from his bright green ones, and she let out a sigh of relief when she saw him conscious.  At some point, he had stopped screaming.  “Thank god you’re alright.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” his throat was lacerated, but he was pleased it came out at all. He spoke as much to her as he did the man intruding in his thoughts.  “It didn’t hurt that bad.”  Across the manor, Voldemort snapped his book close, a storm passing his face.  

She drew back, and a surprised smile transformed into a venomous one.  “Didn’t hurt that much,” she spat.  “You little…”

She started up again, and he started screaming again.

He faded out of consciousness again and came back into himself on the fifth day of his imprisonment.  He had fallen asleep somehow, with his head down, in the stiff wooden chair, but there was a real pleasure to waking up yet again, and knowing he hadn’t been defeated.

The next morning it was Bellatrix that came.  Harry was quieter than he had been before. The little house elf Botchie hadn’t come, and he could feel the thirst that had always been kept at bay by a thimble of water in the dry pain of swallowing.  His vocal cords had torn screaming, and the blood coated the back of his throat.  He didn’t want to rest, not with her around, but he struggled to keep his head up.  At least until the Cruciatus curse started again.

He could have tolerated the torture for more than a few seconds, but the pathway into Lord Voldemort’s mind was easier to slip down the third time Harry tried.  

Voldemort was looking down at a courtroom procedure.  Since Harry had been there last, the Ministry’s department of High Wizard Court had been renamed the department of High Pureblood Court.  There was another department to handle half-bloods, and a third to sentence any muggle born unlucky enough to be caught. 

In the center of the room, an old man in a well-tailored suit breathed heavily.  He looked like someone who had been well taken care of, with a perfectly groomed mustache and a thick belly.  His eyes were on the ground.  The courtroom was full of witches and wizards in traditional robes who muttered amongst themselves.  On the judge’s stand was a large, pale man who more closely resembled an executioner than a judge.  A cursed scar ran down his face.  McNair.

“Alphonse Burke.”  McNair’s voice was sluggish with superiority, and gravely.  “Owner of Borgin and Burke.  Pureblood.  Husband of Loretta Burke, half-blood.”  The pretty young witch to McNair’s right let out a nasally snort of contempt at ‘half-blood’.  “Is that you?”

The man immediately said he was.  

McNair was full of swagger and excited derision as he spoke for the benefit of the witch he sat with.  “They ought to move him downstairs with the other half-bloods, since he loves their foul blood so much.”  He obviously didn’t know his master lingered above him, out of sight and intent on his old shop manager.  None of them knew.  They wouldn’t be gossiping and lounging about so arrogantly if they had.  The dark wizard was out of sight, covered in a cloaking spell, so that he could watch the court case without interfering..  “To the best of your knowledge, have you been in contact with a member of the Order of the Phoenix or any resistance to the Ministry?”

“I have not.”  He spoke in a halting, strange manner.  

“Have you, to the best of your knowledge, been in contact with a mudblood?”

He choked and tried to resist answering, but said.  “Yes.  My brother’s wife is a muggleborn… They fled the country through a portkey I had.”

“That’s a Class I felony,” McNair said with relish.  “Allowing one of those filthy mud monkeys to escape with another wizard’s magic.  It calls into question your loyalties, Burke.”

The witch by his side spoke up excitedly.  “What should we do with him, Your Honor?”

Various witches and wizards spoke up with vile, malicious suggestions to have Burke tortured and killed, all vying for favor by being as awful as they could be.  Harry endured the drawn out questions the Death Eater asked about where the man’s muggleborn relative had gone with anger burning him up.  If anything, it looked like the Ministry had gotten worse than the last time he’d been there.  He wasn’t the only one quietly seething.

Finally, they moved onto what Voldemort cared to listen to.

“You curate and sell Dark magical items?”

“Heirlooms… yes.”  It was clear the man was under the influence of Versiatium potion, by the way he was forced to choke out his answers.

“Do you know what all the artifacts do when you purchase them?”

“Not all the time.  We buy and sell what we think others would like to purchase, that’s all.”

“Have you seen any dark items that would make you invisible?”  

It was so clumsy that Harry found himself wincing alongside Voldemort, but it cleared up why the Dark Lord was so interested in the proceedings.  The cloak.

“Yes, I have.  Within the last year…”  he immediately began to describe at least twelve items that had passed through the store, each of them unremarkable, with powers nowhere near what Harry had always taken for granted his cloak could do.  McNair dutifully listened to him describe increasingly irrelevant magic items while the Dark Lord shifted impatiently.

“You haven’t seen any cloaks that possess that ability?”

“No,” the man said finally, and it was all that Voldemort could take not to kill them all where they stood.  His disappointment was palpable and dark. 

Suddenly the tables had turned and it was Harry in an exceedingly buoyant mood.  The Ministry might have crumbled, he may have been taken hostage, but the Order was still strong and resistant.  Voldemort didn’t know that Harry had had the cloak all those years, right in front of him, and that it resided somewhere out of reach from him, in an enchanted backpack with Ron and Hermoine.

He snapped back to his own reality of being tied to a small wooden chair in a windowless room to see Bellatrix once again inches from his face, intent and anxious.  When he stared at her, she leaned back, disturbed by his calm.

How long had she tortured him for?  

He didn’t know.  He hadn’t felt it.

The dark haired witch looked disgusted.  “You’ve gone insane.”

Maybe he had.  But to her, he said hoarsely, “Or maybe you’ve lost your touch.”

Her face blanched with rage, white hot rage. Spittle flew when she spat out “Crucio!”

He didn’t wait long for the excruciating pain to push him outside of his mind and body.  He went along the tide of his thoughts willingly into the Dark Lord’s mind.

“All the safe houses that have been exposed to us have been empty, Nott.  Have you been interrogating the right people?”  It was not a question that required an answer, and the Death Eaters standing before the Dark Lord in his grand reading room did not look up from where their backs were bowed.  Although his voice was soft and even, rage had been building up for days.  “A few dozen school teachers.”  He said, very quietly.  “Fooling my best men.  And the children?  What about those dear little school children?  Have you managed to find any of them?  Even a trace of where they might be?”  He paused thoughtfully, and his voice came out more syrupy than angry.  “Is there no way, with all the powers of the Ministry and the combined magic prowess of all my followers, for us to find a few school children?”  He let this rest upon them.  

One of them dangerously spoke up, unable to stand the tension.  “On that front, I have some good news.  Although they Disapparated before our tracking party could arrive, we have received information about what their next move may be from a squib that was nearby.”

“And?”  

“They seem to be looking to kill a snake,” the Death Eater said.

Voldemort understood immediately, although his unfortunate followers did not.  

“Kill a snake,” he said in his high, mocking voice.  The cool, dry room began to heat up.  The crystal of the reading lamp exploded, but not one person blinked as the glass shards penetrated only the Death Eaters skins.  Nagini curled tightly around Voldemort’s neck.  “You’re right, that is helpful.  To think, after all the honor and privilege I’ve bestowed on my followers, I am thus repaid.  They return to me, after days, meant to bring back schoolchildren and instead they tell me the information that the children… want to kill… a snake.”  

A blackhole opened up in the Dark Lord’s center.  Glass moved across the carpet to him.  The manor’s walls groaned and leaned into him.  The fire burning sedately was alive with oxygen and Voldemort’s toxic magic, burning ever hotter.  It licked at the back of the Death Eater’s robes.  Their master let his eyes settle on each of them an unnerving amount of time, until the fire had eaten at the back of their legs and still he did not invite them to rise from their bow.  

“Only one of my followers has managed to find a few feeble traitors, after all this time.  I hope you will all ponder deeply how Bellatrix’s devotion to me will be rewarded, and the unique qualities she possesses that allow her to succeed.”  

He put a hand to his temple to mitigate the headache that was building.  He spoke to them slowly, as though they were simple.  “If you find someone who knows a traitor, I don’t care what you have to do to them.  Torture them.  Kill them.  Lure the other traitors out of hiding.  A group of school children and a dozen teachers would not be moving separately, if we can find one, we find them all.  Do you understand?”

Their low bows dipped lower and he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

Master.   Nagini felt his agitation for her, and curled tighter around him.  He could not tell his Death Eaters or any of his closest followers what it meant to him to know they were hunting a snake.  It meant the battle between the light and dark had not ended with the capture of the Chosen One.  

He had allowed his pleasure at taking the boy to distract him from the greater game at play.  The Light had done more damage than he had thought possible while his back was turned and now his soul was divided into only three vulnerable segments.  The game wisely being played by the Light was not about mudbloods, Ministry politics or Hallows.  

It was just him, Nagini and Harry Potter.

Harry Potter tumbled backwards in his own mind, across their connection, as the force of Voldemort’s mind came spilling across their bond, searching for him.  It felt like a hand reaching out.  It was his magic, searingly hot and toxic as black tar, spilling into the space that existed between their two souls, where Harry had retreated and observed for hours while Bellatrix worked her spell on him.  The Dark Lord was anxious and grasping, looking to see that Harry was right where he had left him with Voldemort’s soul fragment tucked away whole and unharmed.  Their magic crashed into the others.  

He felt Voldemort’s fear for his life, his contempt for his followers and his starving hunger for control, and, mind twisting, felt Voldemort feel Harry’s desperation and hunger for news.  They were, in that moment in the space between the two of them, not two separate entities but one. Harry was Voldemort, feeling disturbed and shocked by this development, and he was feeling his own fright and disgust with himself through his enemy’s mind, and then the two men broke apart abruptly, bristling hard as though they had been shocked by electricity.

The room had been empty for the long hours Harry had been consumed with Voldemort’s mind.  Bellatrix Lestrange had gone and he hadn’t even noticed.

He breathed hard, bracing to see Voldemort appear in the empty room and level all his frustration and fear onto his helpless captive, after weeks without an appearance.  He didn’t have to wait long.

Unlike his dirty captive, Voldemort’s appearance had improved in the years since he’d come back, and then again as he had won over the Ministry of Magic.  The robes he wore were exquisitely tailored wizarding robes, in shades of green that deepened as they lay over each other, and although he was just as pale, featureless and snakelike as he had been since his return, his flesh was filled out in a way that indicated strength, if not health.  In comparison, Harry had not much more energy in him than to lift his head.  Seeing as how he was tied to a chair, he hoped this wasn’t too obvious.

“Hiding inside your master’s mind to avoid your punishments, Harry?”  His wand was spinning in between his forefingers.  Voldemort smiled.  It was not a kind smile, but a knowing one.  “I see now that I will have to be the one to dish out your punishment.  We will go until you’re ready to admit defeat.”

There was no word to prepare Harry for what was coming, only the gesture of the Dark Lord’s wand and a shriek of pain that tore itself unbidden out of his lips.  The cruciatus curse was just as effective as it had ever been, and although he automatically retreated to the same space he’d once found peace, it was like hitting a brick wall.  Voldemort had no intention of letting up or letting him escape.  As he so often felt when the curse was on him, he wished he’d managed to kill himself while he’d had the chance.

Voldemort broke the curse off.  “I’ve allowed you time to consider your options and realize your situation, Harry.  No one is going to come here to save you.  You have no chance of escaping.  The only thing that can stand between you and endless hours of the cruciatus curse is your own acceptance.  Do you understand that?”

He did.  He did understand that; he had been at the mercy of the dark lord long enough to know the extent he would be willing to go.  If he wanted Harry tortured every hour of every day, he would go ahead and do that.  Still, he couldn’t give up.

“Very well.”  Voldemort said and raised his wand again to hear Harry scream.

Seconds, minutes, hours.  When the pain was on him, time lost all meaning.  He lost track of where his feet were, where his hands were, what his name was.  All of his body was on fire, and he knew why the Longbottoms had been reduced to the behavior of infancy.  Things stopped making logical sense when enough pain was applied, over long enough time.

The pain stopped abruptly.  After Harry relearned how to open his eyes, he saw that Voldemort had come closer and was staring downward at him.

“You see what I can do to you, Harry?  I don’t need you sane, I only need your body intact to carry the piece of my soul.”  He raised his wand and Harry flinched. He smiled.  “Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it?  Unbearable, isn’t it?  Enough to make you lose your mind.  Well, I can keep going…”  His wand pointed lazily at Harry, whose eyes were fixed on it, but nothing happened.  “Or I can give you reprieve.  It’s entirely up to me.”

“I can’t.”  The words were raspy and nearly inaudible.  “I won’t.”  Harry didn’t know if he intended to make good on his promise to drive him to insanity but giving in to his demands felt just as painful, and more than that, it was unimaginable.  He could not picture himself saying the words, bowing and scraping, obediently going along with it.  Who would he be if he didn’t defy the Dark Lord?  What would be the point of all the sacrifices other people had made for him if he gave up now?  

“I thought you might say that.”  The Dark Lord was utterly unfazed by Harry’s rejection.  “Fortunately, I have something I think will change your mind.”

And then the door to Harry’s cell opened up, and in walked Mrs. Weasley, followed closely by Bellatrix Lestrange.  

Harry’s stomach dropped.  Mrs. Weasley, who had always been pleasantly round cheeked and what Uncle Vernon had once called ‘pudgy’, was shallow cheeked and pale.  Her robes were in worse repair than he’d ever seen them, her knees had mud stains, and blood had not entirely scrubbed clean from the fabric on one of her arms.  She looked just as surprised to see him as he was to see her, tied to a chair in a dank, dark cell.

“Harry,” she said, and it was like a taste of what being at the Burrow felt like, and all the times she’d said his name before pouring him a bowl of soup.  There was a real despair and desperation in her plain brown eyes that cut him to his core because he knew it was for him.  Their eyes were still locked when Bellatrix kicked the back of her knees out and forced her to the stone floor.  Her red hair, so like Ginny’s, was tangled in front of her face.

“Harry,” she said again.

Voldemort lazily pointed his wand at her, and again, there was no warning before the screaming started.  If it had been awful to experience the cruciatus curse, it was nothing to see someone else go through it.  It was not the kind of thing a person could take stoically.  It could not be endured.  It could not be ignored.  It was the highest level of pain the wizarding world had found it could inflict.  

 Like the enlarged spider the fake Professor Moody had cursed, Mrs. Weasley’s entire body contorted and strained, unnatural and unbearable.  

“Stop it,”  Harry said.  It was like he was a little boy again, watching Dudley torture ants, helpless to stop it.  Mrs. Weasley’s screams turned into a keen as Bellatrix Lestrange added her own cruciatus curse to her Master’s.  “STOP IT!”

Voldemort picked up Mrs. Weasley by her tangled red hair and pulled her shuddering and writhing into a sitting position.  “Stop it, please,”  Harry begged.

Bellatrix’s curse was still on her, but now Voldemort was looking at Harry, and Harry realized how well he’d been played by the man who had access to every corner of his mind.  The man who had held hostage all the students in Hogwarts to bring him to the forest, who had lured Harry into trap after trap by playing on his desire to save others.

With a wave of his wand, the chair that held the boy up and the chains that confined him disappeared.  He sprawled out of the floor with a twitch of pain, pushed himself up with trembling arms until Voldemort’s barefoot pressed into his chest and lowered him back into the ground.  Bellatrix had lowered her wand, waiting for her Lord’s instructions.

“I want this lesson to stay with you.”  Voldemort said, looking down at the boy.  “So that we don’t have to repeat it again.  Shall I kill her, Harry?”

Harry’s heart was in his throat and he could not answer.  He was thinking about Ron’s stricken face when George’s body had been laid out.  He was thinking about all he had already cost them.  He looked up with bloodshot green eyes and a cracked pair of glasses, begging quietly although he did not know it yet.  Voldemort’s expression was almost gentle.

“I have Mr. Weasley waiting outside, if I do have to dispose of the woman.”  He said.  “And a long list of people that are disposable to me.  But I don’t have to kill all of them, do I, Harry?”

“Don’t do it,” Mrs. Weasley rasped.  Her voice was wet and hoarse, but the emotion behind it was firm, he saw the switch of anger in Voldemort’s eyes as he felt it in his own body.  

“Silence our guest, Bellatrix dear.”  He said softly.  Harry’s view of her was blocked off by Voldemort’s voluminous robes, but her scream reached him just fine.  

“Please stop it,” Harry said.  He didn’t know what Voldemort wanted from him, but he was prepared to give it, anything, to make the torture stop.  All the bluster and confidence had gone out of him like a candle blown out.  He could not stand against Voldemort if it cost him the people he was trying to protect.  He did not know how to endure Mrs. Weasley’s pain.  “Please.”

“I thought you might say that,” said Voldemort lazily.  Bellatrix’s torture of Molly had not let up.  “I will need to train the disobedience out of you.  If I am to keep you, I will need to know that I can trust you.  Can I, Harry?”

The words did not want to come out of his mouth, partly because Harry knew them to be a lie, and partly because he knew that Voldemort would know that, too.  It was choked up in his throat.  Voldemort’s foot pressed down harder on Harry’s chest, pushing the breath out of him.

“She’ll suffer until you say you’ll obey me.”

“I will,” Harry gasped out as the foot pushed down harder and harder.  Molly Weasley did not stop screaming, and he hated himself for it, but could not stop himself from begging with his last breaths.  “Please…” Voldemort’s eyes gleamed.  He felt the Dark Lord’s pleasure at having Harry beg like this, a strange, dizzying joy that mingled with his own shame and humiliation in his stomach.  It felt like vomit working its way up Harry’s compressed chest, and long-awaited warm satisfaction unfolding through his captor’s.

Black dots floated in front of his eyes.  His body had been badly abused in the weeks since his capture.  Unconsciousness was a familiar experience for him.  Voldemort’s bare toes dug into his dirty shirt as the pressure exceeded pain and became numbing.  He wouldn’t be awake to see what would happen to Mrs. Weasley.  Voldemort would make sure of that.

“Good boy,” Voldemort said as the room faded away.  Those last words followed him into the darkness.

It was days before Voldemort appeared before him again.  Harry spent the time alone, in a new room that was hardly any better than the first, brooding over his choices and looking out the window at the cold gray sky.  He did not know what had happened to Mrs. Weasley, whether she had lived or died, and after the first day, he realized this was exactly what Voldemort had intended.  The lack of information and his imagination was enough to drive him insane, and in fact, had been intended to do just that.

The room was sparsely decorated with a single steel gray bed frame, a thin mattress, and a thinner gray blanket, opposite a table where a pitcher of clear water sat.  The walls were stone, the door was thick wood and impossible to budge.  The only real improvement that Harry counted on was the narrow window built into the stone tower, which gave him a sliver of a view of the entrance of Malfoy Manor.  If he positioned himself to the right of the window and rose up on his toes, he could see a gap in the trees where occasionally visitors could be seen coming and going.  He knew he was in a tower, because he could see the opposite spiral tower on the other end of the manor, and knew that this was the Easternmost tower, based on the rising of the sun, but that was all he could tell.  It was the only distraction he had in his quiet, cold room.

And was it ever cold.  Spring was inching in day by day, but the weather was as brutal as ever.  He could not remember going so long without seeing the sun.  Gray clouds descended down into a thick, cloying mist that stayed in its position over Malfoy manor without seeming to even shift.  The cold sunk into every stone in the tower, and made Harry’s feet go numb when he tried to stand.  The wet air sunk into the mattress he had, so he felt an unpleasant wetness whenever he turned over.  

And the blanket he had wasn’t much help either.  It was gray, pilled and thin, and could barely stretch from his shoulders to his toes.  He had no idea why the Malfoys kept such poor quality around, but he suspected it had been chosen especially for him.

He never took his coat or shoes off, preferring to dangle his legs over the side of the bed, in case there was any chance for him to make a sudden escape.  But when Voldemort left him alone, there was no chance for escape, and eventually he started keeping his shoes on out of pure stubbornness and a need for warmth.  The dirty clothes he’d spent all those months in were starting to smell bad, and feel like an extension of his skin, which was also filthy.

When night fell hours after he woke up that first day, a small bowl of soup had arrived.  It was a very small amount of cabbage and carrots in thin broth.  Harry looked down at it for a long time, but didn’t eat.  He’d gone long periods without eating at the Dursleys.  He knew what hunger felt like and how to endure it.

He returned to the thin mattress and had barely just sat down when Voldemort spoke to him.  Eat it.   He startled, and looked around, because it seemed like he’d said it right next to Harry’s ear.  But of course, he wasn’t anywhere in his dark little room.  His scar pricked, and he knew it was with annoyance, and Voldemort said, I don’t have to hurt Molly Weasley to make you behave, do I?  

Harry stood up with his jaw clenched and went back to the broth.  Yes, he’d known since he’d been knocked unconscious the kind of position he was in.  They’d be tortured if he disobeyed.  And if he killed himself, Voldemort would have no reason to keep the Weasley family alive.  Which meant his only real option was to kill the Dark Lord, and then kill himself. 

He had to walk the thin line between defying the man who killed his parents and keeping his friends and family safe.  He ate the soup but tasted only bitter defeat.

The connection between them stayed silent for days afterwards. Harry went from laying down on the cold cot, staring up at the dark stone ceiling to straining to look out the little window and back again.  Thoughts circled pointlessly throughout his head.  He wondered where Ron and Hermoine were.  What he could do to destroy the horcrux inside of himself.  What was taking place in Hogwarts and the world at large now that Voldemort was in power.  Where Ginny was.  The mistakes he’d made to get himself where he was.  

Whenever he tried to think about how to move forward, he came up against his lack of wand, Voldemort’s access to his mind, the general state of the world at large being under his enemy’s control… It overwhelmed him. 

Even at nightfall there was no relief from his doubts.  He’d been exhausted when he’d first arrived in the room, and happy to have a somewhat pathetic bed and pillow to lay on instead of being upright in a wooden chair, but now he couldn’t sleep no matter how much he tossed and turned.  Insomnia was something he’d experienced before in small doses.  The summer after Sirius died, he’d alternated between burying himself in sleep and being unable to turn his mind off.  He’d lost his appetite.  Hadn’t wanted to see anyone.

This was like that, except he was restless, vulnerable, and if he was being very honest, frightened.  It was hard to sleep in Malfoy Manor knowing Voldemort could pop in whenever he so chose.  To fall asleep meant complete helplessness, whereas awake Harry could at least pretend he had some control over what happened to him.

And then there were the nightmares.  In that thin space between wakefulness and dreams, there was no shortage of monsters to visit him.  Sometimes he was running from Voldemort, or Bellatrix, running with what felt like rubber legs and sand floors.  Sometimes it was Fenrir Greyback, his jagged human teeth biting in the space just below Harry’s toes, his eyes wild and feral.  In a lot of his nightmares, Harry wasn’t alone, but surrounded by the students of Hogwarts, who were picked off one by one until he knew it was his time.  Sometimes he saw the dead faces of friends he prayed were still alive.

When morning came, and another bland bowl of soup arrived, he swung his feet to the floor and tried to pretend he felt rested.

Days passed unpleasantly and uneventfully.  He marked the time by the three meals a day he received, of bland soup, and by the light at the window rising and falling.  He hadn’t heard another command from Voldemort.  He hadn’t received any visions either— that was puzzling.  Before, he’d been inundated with visions of what Voldemort had been up to, and had been able to easily slip along the line of connection that joined their minds.  Now, that line was blocked off.  

If it hadn’t been for the window and the regular appearance of soup, he might have lost track of time altogether.  Days felt like they lasted an eternity.  Maybe the long hours of the cruciatus curse had had some effect on his sanity after all.

Like he did so often when he was frustrated, he threw himself from standing by the window onto the bed, ignoring the way his hip bones collided painfully with the thin mattress.  His stomach gurgled loudly.  As if summoned, the bowl of soup appeared with a crack on the table.

Harry sighed loudly.  

He got up from the bed and ate the soup methodically.  Like the thin blanket that didn’t erase the cold, the thin soup that he was supplied never satisfied his hunger. 

The bowl was half empty when Harry set it back down on the table, sitting back and waiting.  That was a test, to see how closely he was being monitored.  Voldemort had told him to eat, but he had not directly told Harry to finish every meal.  He had to test the boundaries of what he was allowed to do here.

His scar pricked.

“Do you imagine I don’t know?”   Harry was startled off his bed, his heart pounding.  Standing petrified on his toes, he wondered if he should make some kind of answer--

“Did you think you could fool the Dark Lord for so long with your shallow skill in Occlumency?  Me?”  The question was not posed to Harry, but to another man, hundreds of miles away.  He was balding and fat, but not as fat as he’d been while he’d been Harry’s teacher.  His robes, too, were not as resplendent as they used to be when he’d been the head of the Slug Club, but Harry knew those quivering jowls and watery eyes in a heartbeat.  He was on the floor in front of the Dark Lord, but bowing and scraping so low his nose almost touched the floor of the potions classroom.  He was wearing Slytherin green.

“Please,” Slughorn was saying.  “They tricked it out of me, Harry Potter and Dumbledore did, I didn’t mean to tell them about it…”

That answer did not satisfy his former student who drew his elder wand but, for the moment, did not cast any curse.  Harry knew that this reprieve did not mean mercy.  He felt Voldemort’s anger and disgust with the man in front of him.  He let Slughorn keep talking.

“And, of course, I always wanted to pledge my allegiance to you, as you know, it was only that Dumbledore managed to find me, and he told me to come back, he commanded it of me, and threatened—”  

“Silence,” Voldemort said.  “I found your recollection of our conversations in Dumbledore’s pensieve, Slughorn.  I am not here to discuss the mistakes you’ve made, I am well aware of the information you supplied to Albus Dumbledore.”  There was real anger in the Dark Lord’s voice and Horace shuddered.  “Relax.  I don’t intend to kill you today.  I’ve kept you here at Hogwarts and alive, in spite of your treachery, because I saw that someday I might have need of you.  Not for your pitifully shallow understanding of dark magical theory or your adequate ability to create potions, but for your connections.  Agnese Ruethatcher.”

Horace’s mouth fell open slightly.  “Agnese Ruethatcher… you know of… but she was before your time, cast out before you were…”  ‘ before you were a student’ was what Slughorn was thinking fearfully.  He was terrified of offending his former student, but that fear was an opening in his mind, one that Voldemort was only too happy to exploit.  He saw the witch’s face in Slughorn’s mind, her small black eyes and lank, stringy hair.  She’d been ancient when she’d taught Horace Slughorn Defense Against the Dark Arts and had died not long after he’d passed his NEWTs.

“Tell me what you know of her.”  Voldemort commanded.

Slughorn licked his lips.  His stuttering reply came out slowly.  “Well, she was my teacher in the last three years at Hogwarts as a student myself… chosen by Headmaster Dippet on account of her knowledge of the Dark Arts.  Had no idea she was so deep into it until… until the Aurors arrived at Hogwarts one night and took her away to Azkaban.  She died there, or so I’ve heard.”

Voldemort had heard differently about her death, but did not say that.

“Did she let on any information about her studies while you were her student?”

“Her studies… yes, yes she let slip a thing or two.  She was up there in age by the time she was a teacher, it seemed sometimes like she wasn’t entirely there, if you know what I mean.  It would have been smarter to hide the things she did but from the start she made it perfectly clear the lengths she was willing to go for power.  Didn’t care to hide it.  On our very first day of class, she brought in a dog on a leash.  She had two students hold it down while she cut its throat and made it into an inferi.  Technically, making an inferi out of an animal wasn’t illegal back then.  No one knew it could be done— it was unprecedented.  Dippet was furious.”

Dippet had hoped she would share her knowledge with him instead of with her students.  Voldemort knew all this about the witch Ruethatcher, but he let Slughorn continue.

“Did she share any of her other studies with you?”

The recollection was difficult for the old potions master.  He felt the old man’s self-disgust.  Peering into his mind, he could see Horace as a young man with a full head of blond hair, lacking his trademark mustache.  There were two other students with him around the professor, holding their wands level at the symbol drawn on the floor.  The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in his memory was hunchbacked and intent on some cruel project… Horace’s mind slammed shut around him as the man focused his attention.

Another wizard, like Dumbledore, might have given up at that point.  The cruciatus curse would be enough to crack open the old wizard’s concentration and willpower.  Except, Horace Slughorn had never been renowned for his willpower.  Voldemort drew his elder wand and only had to point it at him for his face to crumble.

“She said she was trying to gain some kind of advantage over death.  Or in death.  She was making horcruxes but we didn’t know at the time.  She did horrible things to these bodies, but she never let us see the whole thing.  She was going…”  He stuttered nervously.  “She was going insane.”

“Did she have cats?”

“Cats?”

“I won’t repeat myself.”

He nodded furiously.  “Yes, yes she did, all over the place.  They were with her in the classroom all the time.  At least five or six of them… Evil, clever things.  Magical, somehow.”

Slughorn didn’t ask how Voldemort had known she’d had cats when the old lady had died before he was born, and Voldemort didn’t explain himself.  What he had to do next was track down where he could find the dead witch, for which Horace Slughorn would be of no help.  Still, he felt that all the secrets he needed had not yet been extracted from the old teacher, and so he left him alive in his potions classroom, issuing orders to his Death Eaters as he went to keep him where he could be found.

Harry snapped out of Lord Voldemort’s mind.  His half-eaten bowl of soup had fallen to the floor at some point, leaving a trail of soft carrots and cabbage on the floor.  He pressed a hand to the scar on his head, which was warm.  He felt the shadow of Voldemort’s emotions, but they were distant and not overcoming him.  He had thought Voldemort was determined to shut him out of his head, but he did not think what he’d just seen was something he’d been meant to see. 

He pressed his hand hard against his forehead, feeling a headache coming on.  It was of no help to him or the Order that Voldemort was researching horcruxes.  They already knew he had horcruxes, and Harry knew it best of all.  

While laying on his back with his hand covering his face, he somehow fell asleep.  His dreams felt numb and confused, full of bowls of soup and Voldemort’s laughing face.  When he woke up again, the sky outside his window was pitch black and the room was freezing.  It was the kind of cold he associated with dementors.  His old pilled blanket wasn’t large enough to cover both his feet and his chest, so he had pulled himself into a tight ball at some point in the night.  If he moved half an inch in either direction on his thin mattress, he could feel how cold and damp the mattress was without his body heat.

Throughout the night the dreams became more vivid.  Flashes of another life passed over his closed eyelids.  An ancient book with a fragile spine, pages flipping methodically.  A man in black on his knees, making a detailed report.  He turned over and over in his sleep, wishing he could sleep in peace.  Nagini, a warm weight on his shoulder, hissing suggestions to him.  When he was awake, he was exhausted and cold, in his dreams, he was frightened and confused.

Daytime had passed him by– he had not noticed the coming and going of his morning meal, and apparently, Voldemort hadn’t either.  When lunch rolled around, he knew he should get out of bed and obediently take the meal, but he also knew the stone floor would be cold on his feet, and he had not managed to warm up, no matter how tight of a ball he drew himself into.  He stayed huddled in bed, slipping between his mind and the dark lord’s until dinner came.

At nightfall, when the soup came and sat, he felt Voldemort’s presence in his mind.  He tried to empty his mind of any thoughts.  Annoyance and a lasting anger that had a bitterness to it like hatred, that was typical of Voldemort’s emotions when he was dealing with his young horcrux.  Harry saw a split second of a library room and a desk covered with important letters.

Eat, Harry.  Don’t test my patience.

Had he hissed that message in parseltongue or was Harry losing it?  There was no point in trying to pretend he hadn’t heard.  He swung his feet over the bed and took a few cold steps to a soup that was now lukewarm.  Even though he hadn’t eaten for over a day, he wasn’t hungry for his measly portion.  It was a real challenge to pick up the spoon and swallow a few bites, but he could feel Voldemort paying attention to him, and so he slowly managed to choke it down.

He laid back down when he was finished, shivering intensely.  He hadn’t managed to get up and check the window all day to see if he could spot any comings-and-goings.  It was colder near the window, and avoiding the cold was turning into his top priority.  Perhaps it was the dementors around Malfoy manor.  Or just a last cold snap in early spring– if it was early spring.  Days were beginning to blend in his mind, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how many weeks it had been since he’d been captured, and while he was trying to figure it out, he fell asleep again.

Waking up in the middle of the night, Harry turned over to the side of his bed and vomited up his dinner of vegetables and water.  His heaving and gagging seemed to go on for forever, and even when he’d emptied out all the contents of his stomach, he still felt nauseous.  His stomach was turning like he’d been on a rollercoaster, or apparated.  He spat out the spit in his mouth, and flopped back down on his cold mattress.

He was so used to headaches and pain that he’d thought nothing of it when his scar was burning.  But it was not his scar burning.  It was his forehead.

He’d been ill before plenty of times, sick with wracking coughs or flus that lasted weeks to recover from, but that had been before he’d joined the wizarding world when he’d still been shut up inside the Dursley’s broom closet.  Back then he’d had to deal with his illnesses alone.  Aunt Petunia had never wanted to approach him because she’d been afraid of getting Dudley sick, or so she said.  She’d left meals in front of the door of the broom closet and left him to take care of himself. 

Sometimes he’d thought he’d die from those illnesses and no one would even notice.  

When the morning light came through his narrow window, he rolled over to find Voldemort standing above him with a house elf and Lucius Malfoy cowering behind him.  His hand was on Harry’s forehead– how long it had been there he didn’t know, but it withdrew before Harry could flinch away.  He blinked stupidly at them.

“We need a doctor here,” Voldemort was saying, but his voice was distorted and far away.  Harry pushed himself up on his elbows, trying to focus on the blurry images in front of him.  Instinctively, he reached for where his glasses should be, but came up with nothing. 

“Ysvley is a competent healer,” came Lucius Malfoy’s voice.  “Shall I send for him to come?”

Voldemort nodded curtly and Lucius summoned his patronus, which burst out of his wand as a long legged crane with a black cap on its skull.  It disappeared through the walls of the manor in a flash of silver light.  Without the blanket covering his chest, Harry suddenly felt the force of cold hit him again and he shivered convulsively.  

Being in the presence of his parents’ murderer was like having an electric shock run through him.  He wanted to look away from him, but did not want to be caught unaware of him or whatever curse might come flying his way, so it resulted in him looking past Voldemort to the little table where the soup appeared.  Voldemort did not share his shyness.  He looked straight at him.

The last few days of fevered dreams and exhaustion were starting to make sense.  How much of what he’d seen had been true glimpses into Voldemort’s mind and how much had been his mind playing tricks on him?  He wished he’d realized sooner it was a fever making him dream like that.  

But if he was sick enough to need a doctor that meant...  That meant he might be sick enough to die.

“My– my lord, if I might suggest,” Lucius was saying.  “My wife Narcissa has often assisted as a healer for our death eaters, she was a remarkable student at St. Mungo’s before–”

“Bring her here then.”  Voldemort said abruptly.  “You have enough potions on the premises, do you not?  Bring any here that might be of use, I want this solved quickly.”

“Yes, my lord.”  Lucius hesitated, and Harry felt his fear.  Or Voldemort felt his fear, and then...  “Only… most of our potion supply has been used in recent months, my lord, some of the potions take time to brew and have not been re–”

“Then go out and get more!”  Voldemort exploded.  He was in Lucius’s face, his eyes like slits and his teeth bared.  “Do I have to do all the thinking around here?  Get it wherever you can find it, from anywhere, I don’t want to hear what excuses you have to offer for your incompetence, when your only job is to keep this manor in working order.”

Harry’s hand was on his scar, where he could feel Voldemort’s anger and fear.  Fear, fear of what?  Voldemort towered over Lucius, who looked diminished in all aspects, paler and thinner than Harry had ever seen him, although perhaps it was his lack of glasses.  Voldemort was spitting out more insults at him, questioning his intelligence and commitment, while Lucius tried weakly to defend himself.  Harry’s head was spinning. He thought he might be sick again.

A knock came at the door, a modest double tap.  The door opened to reveal two blurry figures, one short and squat and the other tall and lean, with a sheet of icy blond hair.  The healer Ysvley and Narcissa.  Harry could only assume because he could not make out any details without his glasses.  Another figure appeared behind them.  All three bowed low before their Lord.

The one Harry thought was Ysvley spoke first.  “A pleasure to be of service to you, my Lord.”

“I’ve heard promising things about your skill, Ysvley.  I hope you will prove yourself as useful to me as you have been to the Ministry in years past.  I need the boy alive, I need him healthy, and I will need you to make the unbreakable oath before you leave, to ensure your complete discretion of anything you might see here.”  Ysvley bowed low.  “A complete discretion I expect of all my followers.”

“Yes, my lord,” Said Narcissa and Draco Malfoy simultaneously. 

Harry would recognize that voice anywhere.

Harry did not like that they were all looking at him, sitting in dirty old clothes on a thin mattress, obviously captured and helpless.  He could not make out Draco Malfoy’s expression, whether he’d known Harry Potter resided in one of the rooms of his manor or if he was just now finding out, but he’d rather not know.  If he didn’t feel so wretched physically, he might have been angry at all of them for the role they’d played in getting him here, but as it was, he just felt humiliated.  

The short healer approached with his wand out and Harry instinctively withdrew from him as he tried to put his hand on Harry’s forehead.  “His symptoms?”

Voldemort said, “Fever.  Vomiting.  He didn’t eat yesterday.” 

 The healer touched Harry’s forehead, moving faster than Harry had expected so that he couldn’t be avoided.  His hand was surprisingly cool and it made Harry erupt into shivers again.  

“If it’s just a normal flu, I won’t be too worried.”  The healer’s tone was succinct and calm.  There was a levelness there despite Voldemort lingering behind his back that Harry could respect.  “Unfortunately, some magical maladies like Hotcher’s Extended lymph nodes have been circulating among my patients more frequently lately.  I’ve seen a dozen wizards fall prey to it and I’m afraid it’s a fair bit more dangerous and difficult to treat.”  He drew out a notepad and pointed his wand at Harry.  As he spoke the incantation, Voldemort’s attention was entirely on the notepad.  He sensed the Dark wizard’s irritation.

“What does this mean?” Voldemort said impatiently.  “Is it a magical malady or isn’t it?”

“What’s wrong with his left foot?” Narcissa asked, as apparently she could also make out what the notepad said.  Harry was startled.  He did not know what could be wrong with his left foot, until the healer reached out and grabbed his left calf, and his whole body convulsed.  It was sensitive like he’d been sleeping on it.  He’d forgotten he was still wearing his old sneakers, for the warmth.  The healer was trying to pry them off, and Harry reacted instinctively to kick out and push them away, but it made his entire leg light up in pain, and Narcissa joined the healer in holding Harry’s left leg down at the ankles, while he loosened and undid the shoe laces.

“Lie still,” Voldemort commanded.

He tried to pull away, purely to disobey, and ended up helping them as they pulled his old sneaker loose from his foot, revealing a mangy old sock.  He remembered then, what he’d done as he’d apparated to escape Voldemort those many weeks ago, arriving on the muggle train with his foot spliched and bloody.  Now, his foot was healed, but badly– swollen and shaped with lines that had been constrained by his sneakers.  The skin was pink and raw, and it was so sensitive when the healer touched it that Harry couldn’t help but gasp and try to withdraw it.

“It’ll need to be reopened, cleaned and set.”  The healer was saying, as Narcissa reapplied her grip onto his leg, which was shooting pain up his spine and making him hiss.  He was just thinking with dread the words reopened, cleaned and set when the healer Ysvley took hold of the bottom of his foot.  Someone was screaming, it was him, and he was falling backwards, and then nothing.

Harry woke up again in a different room.  He was on his back and the same people were surrounding him on a thin, hard bed. The healer by his feet, Narcissa by his head, wiping the sweat off his forehead, and Voldemort pacing impatiently behind them.  His limbs were bound to the bed by thin black cords, but he couldn’t feel anything below his hips, which was a mercy.  The healer had a cluster of knives, scalpels, bandages and surgical instruments floating magically around him.  Reopening the wound must have already happened, because when he looked down he could see bloody bandages being removed by Narcissa.  He turned his head to the side, it was the only part of his body that wasn’t bound, and tried not to look at whatever bloody thing was being done to his leg.

They were in some large room, perhaps a bathroom or a hospital wing of some sort.  The walls were tiles of varying shades of green that formed intricate patterns of pentagons. There were five small rooms surrounding a large pool with a stained glass dome ceiling over it, divided up by screens and chaise lounges.  They were in one room, underneath a hanging chandelier of candles, dangling with dried herbs. He recognized the bone-regrowth potion from Madam Pomfrey’s supply in a cabinet full of vials of various potions.  Lucius Malfoy was by that cabinet bent over and focusing on ladling precise amounts of potion into empty vials.  

“Be calm,” Voldemort was saying.  “There is still a need for these people, do not strike them.”  Harry wanted to know why Voldemort thought him capable of striking anyone when another voice answered in a hiss.

“It’s not me that needs to be calm.”   He followed Voldemort’s gaze to the empty bath, where Nagini’s large-diamond shaped head was peering upwards.  He met her eyes, startled by the intelligence he saw there.  “He’s awake.”   He understood her perfectly and looked over to where the Dark Lord was.  

Voldemort was in his space, leaning over Harry with his intense red eyes sweeping over his sweating face, inches from him.  Harry recoiled.  The hand Voldemort put on his head was cool to the touch, smooth and firm.  It left as soon as it arrived.

“He’ll need close watching for the next few days.”  The healer was saying.  “His foot is fixed but I’m afraid the inflammation of his foot is just a part of the larger problem.  This flu has been going around the hospitals and prisons for a while now.  It’s wizards with weakened bodies and minds that are susceptible to it.”

“Could he die of it?”  Voldemort asked.  Harry was glad he had, because he wanted to know too, although for different reasons.  

“It’s possible but with the right medicine and care, I’m confident that’s a very small probability.  At the moment, his body is too weak to fight it off, and his magic is not responding to combat the fever.”  Ysvley met the Dark Lord’s eyes steadily, hiding nothing, which Harry knew because Voldemort knew.  It hurt his head, which was already muddled, to try and separate their thoughts.  “I’ve seen it often in prisoners who have been exposed to Dementors. When a wizard’s mind is unstable, his magic will not assist him in healing.”  Ysvley held up Harry’s wrist, wrapping his entire hand around it, before Harry could think of pulling away.  He pinched the muscles on his wrist.  “He’s significantly under the weight a wizard of his age should be.  Long term malnourishment showed up in my initial scan of his physicality.  You can see from how tense his muscles are that he’s showing chronic signs of stress.”  Harry suspected that it had something to do with being subjected to the cruciatus curse again and again.  Or maybe Voldemort was the one suspecting that.  Harry let his head fall weakly against the cot he was on.  “These things all together would weaken any wizard’s immune system.”

“I see.”  Voldemort’s face was unreadable.  The emotions Harry was getting through their bond were likewise confused.  “Do what you need to.  I need him to be healthy.”

“I can recommend a plan for long term revitalization of his immune system and a plan to renourish him, but what we need to do now is get his fever down.”

“We have a sixteenth century Lyns-Gate bathtub with a herb and potion infuser.”  Narcissa said.  She was cleaning away bloody bandages from Ysvley’s station with graceful flicks of her wand.  “I have a supply of fever-reducing Boxt-Pattley potions, and Anaise-Star nutrient boosters.”

“Perfect, we’ll start with the Lyns-Gate tub right away.  I’ll retrieve a potion to protect his immune system while he recovers, but I think we should leave it at that.  Too many potions on a weakened body stand a chance of producing undesired effects, I recommend we start the Anaise-Star nutrient boosters once we’ve finished with the Boxt-Pattley medication.”

“You’ll stay on until he’s better,” Voldemort said to Ysvley.  There was no room for argument.  “You and Narcissa will take shifts watching him.  Where is the bath?”

“I’ll summon it, my lord.”  Narcissa bowed demurely to him.  She raised her wand and Harry saw one of the baths stand up. A porcelain bathtub with four claw feet and a carved lion head stretching up in the back walked determinedly towards them across the tiled floor.  The lion’s head had emerald-green eyes that roved wildly around the room, and a mouth of sharp teeth that opened and closed constantly.  It was large enough to fit multiple people, with a silver spout on either side of its porcelain walls. It waddled in an awkward kind of way, despite how fierce it looked.  It halted in front of the group of wizards and settled itself down.  

“I think an infusion of turmeric, rhinoceros horn and eucalyptus will do the trick,” Ysvley said.  He waved his wand and water poured steamingly hot from the spouts.  “Grab the Boxt-Pattley potion for me, please, Mr. Malfoy.”

The potion that Lucius brought over was light blue and had pieces of herbs floating in it. He handed it off to the healer and retreated back to the potion’s cabinet, where he was out of Lord Voldemort’s eyesight.  Ysvley spooned a portion of it out and approached the boy still strapped to the table.  Harry hadn’t been sure if the healer knew who he was dealing with here, but the way he eyed his young patient made him think that he was somewhat aware of Harry’s reputation.  

Which was good, because Harry had no intention of taking the medicine.  He’d been listening to all that the healer had said, and he’d be a fool not to take his best chance at death now, when his body was already weakened and half-way there.  He met the healer’s eyes levelly and kept his mouth closed.

“Open your mouth.”  It was Voldemort that said it.  He had been standing and observing by the deep tub that Nagini had been circling, but now he approached the table that Harry was tied to with some intense emotion in his eyes.  Harry couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he knew he, at least, was afraid.

Harry clenched his jaw and didn’t respond. 

“You’re hoping the illness will kill you, is that it?”  Voldemort said in a low hiss.  “Do you think you’ll find mercy from me because of your illness?”  Harry’s scar burned painfully, but he could not reach up and touch it.  Voldemort withdrew his wand with a savage glint in his eyes.  Harry braced for the cruciatus curse.

“Open your mouth.”   His mind was awash with sensation.  It drove his thoughts away.  It was pleasant to not have to think, to not have to feel any pain or discomfort.  He was numb to his own body.  He knew what this feeling was– once, in a classroom, years ago, someone had cast it on him.

I won’t.

Ysvley had the spoon half inside Harry’s open mouth when he bit down on it.  Half of the medicine spilled down Harry’s shirt.  Harry did not loosen his jaws.  He met the healer’s eyes fiercely, and heard Voldemort’s scoff.  A hand gripped the back of his neck and pulled him away from the spoon, he looked up to see Voldemort’s pale face glowering down an inch away from his face.  He swallowed the small amount of bitter medicine that had ended up on tongue, by accident.  

Voldemort shook him by the scruff with one hand.  It scattered Harry’s thoughts and he flopped around helplessly.  When it stopped, Harry was alarmed by how weak he was and how easily Voldemort had disciplined him.

“Enough.”  Voldemort said.  “Take the medicine.”

Harry was wise enough to see he had no choice here, one way or another he was going to be made to take the medicine– but that did not mean he was going to survive.  The Dark Lord did not let go of Harry’s neck until Ysvley had another spoonful.  His grip on Harry tightened painfully until Harry obediently opened his mouth to accept the bitter medicine.  Then he didn’t pull away until Harry had swallowed. 

It was gratifying and a little annoying that Voldemort thought he needed such close attention to follow such simple instructions.  He watched him warily as Voldemort retreated to the center of the bathing room, where Nagini was peering at them.

“He’ll need to take a spoonful of the medicine every three hours,” the healer was saying without looking at Harry at all.  “And be bathed in the infusion twice a day.  If his fever goes down in the next few days I’d consider his chances of recovery good.”  

The strange tub was full of steaming green water and he was meant to get in it.  His stomach flipped.  He was meant to get into that tub, in front of everyone?  A quiet voice in his head voiced the concern he had not allowed himself to think, he had to get in that tub in front of this group, naked?

He pulled on the ties binding him, but they didn’t budge.

Lucius seemed to have spotted the necessity of what had to come, too.  He drew his wand on Harry with a wry little smile on his face that said he was relishing the humiliation that had to come.  He’d hated Harry ever since he had set Dobby free. Lucius Malfoy was at the top of the list of people he didn’t want to be able to see him naked, followed only by the other man in the room whom he hated more, who was watching the preceding coldly.

“Harry,” Voldemort said.  “Take off your clothes.”

Harry jerked his head back, breathing hard.  The binding was gone from around his limbs.  They had disappeared so that he could follow Voldemort’s orders.  He flexed his hand and arm with his newfound freedom.  

“Perhaps we should stupify the boy,” Lucius suggested.  “Before we uncloth him.”

“I don’t think putting more stress on him would be a good idea,” Ysvley was protesting as Harry lunged at Lucius’s wand.  The Deatheater hadn’t expected Harry to act so quickly or directly.  He pushed Harry away with one hand, just as furious and determined as Harry was, but not as desperate.  As he swung his fist at Lucius’s face, he made a grab for the man’s wand, finding the smooth wood and pulling it almost loose, until arms pulled him back.  Narcissa had one of his arms, Ysvley had another one, and they hauled him back easily.

If he could just get one of their wands– 

Voldemort had him by the throat.  He lifted Harry up like he weighed nothing, strangling off his breath.  The others fell away as their eyes met; one pair of desperate green eyes, one pair of vicious red eyes.  His fingers dug so easily into Harry’s soft skin it was like he was made of clay.  Harry choked.

“You said you’d be obedient,” Voldemort said in a very calm and even voice.  “You said you’d obey me.  Were you lying, Harry?”

He could not answer.  He did not want to answer.  Tears rose up unbidden in his eyes and he clawed fruitlessly at the hands on his neck.  Voldemort did not need to say a spell out loud to cast it.  He wordlessly stripped Harry of his clothes.  Harry squirmed naked in the air for a second and then Voldemort threw him into the lion headed bathtub.

He disappeared beneath the herbal infused green water and took a breath in desperately, filling his lungs with water as he hit the bottom of the bathtub with his shoulder.  Pain and shock emptied his head, he was underneath the water for three full seconds before he burst to the surface, choking and gasping.  He coughed hard but couldn’t open his eyes without water stinging his eyes. He was aware he was naked underneath warm water and hurriedly wiped his face clean with one hand.

Three faces were shocked and wet with bath water, which had sprayed everywhere.  Standing the closest to the tub, Voldemort was entirely dry and grinning.  Harry glared at him.

“You didn’t need to throw me in.”  Harry said hotly.  

This was ignored.  “How long should he be in there?”  Voldemort asked the healer.

Ysvley cleared his throat.  “I’d say two hours or more, for the full effect.”

“And you’re sure that this will cure his fever?”

“Y-yes, my lord.”  Ysvley came forward and pressed a hand to Harry’s head.  “His temperature has already gone down.  That probably has more to do with the Boxt-Pattley potion than the bath, at the moment.  Let’s infuse more mint into the mixture, that ought to help the inflammation.”  Ysvley shuffled over the cabinet of potion supplies, joined by Narcissa who knew exactly where to find what he was looking for, and then by her husband, seemingly in want of something to do.

Even though half of the water had already spilled out, Harry was happy to note that most of his body was underneath the brackish green water.  With his legs pulled up and pressed together, the water lapped at his chest, leaving only his shoulders, head and knees in the air.  The smell of mint and other herbs was strong in the air.  

“Don’t even think of trying to drown yourself.” Voldemort said to him.  “You won’t manage it and you won’t like the punishment that comes afterward.”  He came closer to the bathtub and dipped a finger into the green water.  Harry didn’t like that he was so close.  There was no room to withdraw, and he didn’t want to shift and move his legs, which were guarding what was left of his modesty.  He brought a hand up and experimentally felt his throat, where Voldemort had lifted him into the air.  Voldemort watched him touch that spot with a small smile.  “A mild punishment for trying to grab one of my death eater’s wands.”

The two of them had never managed to be alone without some level of violence.  Mostly at Harry’s expense.  Years and years of experiencing pain in his presence made him feel jittery but he would rather die than show it.

A diamond-shaped head rose over the side of the lion-shaped bathtub and Nagini dipped herself into Harry’s bathwater.

Her entire head disappeared near his feet and her smooth, wet scales brushed against his skin.  He squirmed and tried to move away, but even holding onto the edge of the bathtub wasn’t enough to prevent him from drifting towards her in the middle of the bathtub.  The midsection of her long body was just about as thick as Harry was at the waist and she had no problem with taking up as much space in the warm bath water as she wanted to.  It was up to Harry to contort around her.

“Smells good, ” She commented in parseltongue as she rose to the surface.

“Indeed.”  Voldemort said with a smile.

Ysvley mercifully came back with a package full of fresh herbs, which he inserted into the porcelain lion’s gaping mouth.  He said nothing about his uncomfortable patient or the gigantic python in the bathtub with him.  More steaming hot water poured out of spouts on either side of Harry and Nagini.  The snake’s intelligent eyes followed Ysvley predatorily as he walked back towards the medicine cabinet and her tail lashed underneath the water.  There was no way for Harry to avoid touching her scales with his bare skin.  She was twelve feet long and only fit in the bath by curling around him.

He couldn’t help but think of the time Nagini had pretended to be a decrepit old woman and then had shuffled off the old woman’s skin and lunged at him with a mouth wide enough to swallow his head.

  He didn’t hate snakes.  He didn’t think it was their fault they were connected to the Dark Lord.

But this one…

In order to do his job, he’d have to kill her.  It wasn’t a task he dreaded morally, he didn’t think he’d lose any sleep over killing the twelve foot long man-eating reptile, but it was intimidating.  He could feel the powerful muscles of her body rippling as she turned this way and that, and he had not forgotten about the knife-like sharpness of her teeth ripping into Mr. Weasley’s body.  If he could wrap his hands around her neck, could he kill her?

As if sensing his thoughts, the snake turned her diamond shaped head towards him.  Her small black eyes fixed on his.

“Was Dumbledore the one who set you on the task of killing my Nagini?” Harry was startled by the question and he looked upward to see Voldemort observing him.  “He told you what she is to me.”  

There seemed to be no point in denying it.  Reluctantly, Harry nodded.

This did not seem to overly displease the Dark Lord, whose thin lips drew into a grim smile.  “I hope to impress upon you the difficulty in which you’d find the task.  Not only is Nagini capable of killing and devouring wild water buffalo five times your weight, she is endowed with some of the most powerful magical protections you can imagine.  Her scales are impenetrable by normal blades.  Her flesh is impervious to fire.  She is of an exceptional breed of snake naturally possessing a certain magical property that makes them very hard to curse.  They are known to devour wizards whole in the mountains of the North Caucasus.”  Nagini’s huge scaled body rose up out of the water with alarming grace and power to her master, who reached out and stroked underneath her chin.  

Harry did not feel comforted by any of this information, given that most of her body was still underneath the water with his naked body.  Voldemort’s eyes glittered.  

“Furthermore, her mind is connected to mine, as I’m sure you know.”  Yes, Harry did know, all too well.  “Please do not delude yourself that you’d be capable of injuring her, you’d only embarrass yourself and force me to punish you.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Harry said sulkily.  The snake sank smoothly to the floor and in several long moments of her diamond shaped scales rising up out of the water, she left the bath.  It was almost beautiful, how easily she moved.

He drew his arms around his legs and put his head on top of his knees.  The feeling of nausea can and went in waves, and he felt it then, like stomach acid crawling its way up his throat.  Unbidden, the thought of Aunt Petunia’s fish pie rose in his mind and he closed his eyes to push the vivid smell and taste of it away.  

The medicine and bath might have taken down his fever, but he still felt sick.  Sick and weak.  And tired.

He opened his eyes again.  Voldemort had retreated a few feet away but was still observing Harry with glittering red eyes.  A chair had appeared where Harry knew it had not been a few moments ago, pressed against the back of the tiled bathroom walls.  The process of potion making was taking all of the Malfoy’s and the healer’s attention, or perhaps they were just trying to stay busy to avoid having to deal with the tension between the Dark Lord and his captive.

Harry did not want to deal with that tension either.  He hated having to look at the waxy and pale face of the man who’d murdered his parents.  He hated being so powerless in front of him.  And even though he hated himself for it, he was afraid of him.  It was easier by far to look into the rippling water around him.  There were little bits of herbs floating in the greenish water, and the steam rolling off the top made a pleasant swirling pattern in the air.  It was calming to look at that and not see his tormenter’s glowing red eyes.  It was calming enough to make him close his eyes and put his heavy head on his knees.  The warmth was the best part of the bath, he reflected.  It’d been so long since he hadn’t been cold.