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Bonds of Blood and Magic | ||||||
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Category: Post-HBP Characters:Harry/Ginny, Severus Snape Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, Romance Warnings: Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Violence/Physical Abuse Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 932 Summary: A few days before Bill and Fleur's wedding, Harry vanished. Two weeks later, Ginny disappeared, also alone and without a trace. Someone has stepped out of the shadows for a moment, moved some pieces on the board, and changed the rules of the game. Hitcount: Story Total: 407103; Chapter Total: 19631 Awards: View Trophy Room Author's Notes: How did Snape, Ginny, and Harry end up in the mountain glen? Read Chapter 2 and find out! |
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Harry Potter was not having a bad morning, for the first time in weeks. He was finally at the Burrow, with his favorite family in the world. Ginny had not spoken to him since he arrived. She looked sad, but not angry. He needed to speak to her soon. He hoped that she understood why it was so important that people didn’t know how he felt about her, but wasn’t sure that she would actually accept it. She’d said that she understood, but that didn’t really make it easier on either of them. The whole situation was actually a bit depressing, but being unhappy wasn’t going to kill them. Ron, Harry, and Ginny flew in the paddock for a couple of hours that morning, mostly just passing the quaffle and trying to score on whomever decided to play keeper. Since it was just to pass the time, and there were three of them, they didn’t worry about keeping score or doing anything too fancy, just spending time together. Ginny didn’t speak to him, but whenever he wasn’t looking, she stared at him, drinking in his presence. Harry did the same whenever he thought she wasn’t looking at him, but she noticed every time. Normally quite a good chaser, she had trouble catching and holding the quaffle most of the morning. It is hard to see well when ones eyes are full of tears, after all. After lunch, Hermione Apparated in, and Luna Flooed over from her father’s home. They all decided to go swimming at the pond. Harry mostly sat on the side of the water, looking sadly at Ginny. She acted like he wasn’t there, swimming laps, or playing tag with Luna. Harry went to bed early, to try to be alone for a while. He decided that he would speak to Ginny in the morning, right after breakfast. He couldn’t do this all the way up through the wedding and then their birthdays. He just couldn’t handle not knowing what she was thinking. He got up with the sun, since he’d been unable to sleep for a couple of hours anyway, and went for a long walk. He was surprised to find himself on the outskirts of Otterey St Catchpole, as he hadn’t meant to leave the wards at the Burrow. He almost turned around and ran to get back to the Burrow, but realizing that he was hungry, he decided to have breakfast at the bakery across the street from him. All they served at breakfast time was pastries, scones and coffee, so he ordered the scones and coffee. Blueberry scones weren’t his favorite, but they would do. This way, he would be able to think some more before having to face the conversation he was determined to have with Ginny that morning. He was about halfway through his third scone when a dark shadow crossed his table. Severus Snape settled himself in the chair across from him. “Oh, don’t bother getting up, Potter, I’m already sitting.” Snape’s smirk was as annoying as ever. Harry was in shock, which was the only reason he didn’t immediately draw his wand and blast a curse into the black-cloaked figure before him. The last time he’d seen Snape, he’d sworn to kill the Death Eating scum, and here he was. But they were in the middle of a mostly Muggle village, with far too many eye-witnesses for a magical duel to start in the middle of a bakery on a Saturday morning. By the time his mind caught up with the reality that Snape was actually sitting there, he’d decided not to attack him unless there was no other choice. He would regret that decision for the next two weeks. “What do you want?” Harry asked cautiously. “Oh, I’m here for some breakfast, just like you,” he sneered. “Amycus and Rudolphus are watching the exits, and Bella’s right over there at the counter getting me some scones, so I hope that you’ve got enough sense not to try anything, Potter. I really do. Going to be smart for once? Right, then, what we’re going to do is Bella is going to come over here with my breakfast, and you and I are going to walk out of here together, like the old friends that we are. She’ll follow along behind like the good little dog she is, just to make sure that everything goes the way I want it to. You understand, of course?” “Of course,” said Harry faintly. ‘How could I have been so stupid!’ “If you do try anything, I’m afraid a lot of these good people aren’t going to be having lunch. Ever.” “Right.” ‘I am the biggest idiot alive. How could I have done this? I don’t deserve to live,’ Harry thought to himself. “So, then, Bella’s on her way over here now, so let’s greet her properly, shall we? Then we can be on our way.” ‘How the hell am I going to get out of this?’ Harry thought desperately, but no clever plan came to his mind. “Get up, Potter. Say hello to your dear cousin Bella.” Harry didn’t move, his mind and body frozen. “Do it!” hissed Snape. Harry stood, nodded shortly to Bellatrix, and then headed for the door. Snape intercepted him. “Together, Potter,” his whispered, “Amycus will blow you to pieces if you walk through the door without me.” “Amycus couldn’t blow snot from where he is, Snape, and you know it,” Harry snorted. He could see Amycus Carrow trying, and failing, to look casual leaning against a phone box on the other side of the street. “Fine,” Snape hissed, “then Bella will blast you from behind. And you know that she can hit you, so don’t be stupid. If you can help it.” Harry stopped walking. “Bloody traitorous prat. So, what’s the plan? You take me out in the woods and kill me? Take me to Tom? Torture me? What do you get out of this, get to be chief bootlicker in charge? Score with Bella?” Snape’s nostrils flared as he roughly took Harry’s arm. “You would do well to keep silence on things you know nothing about, Potter. It would be more healthy for you. Now, move, or you will regret it.” Harry looked back at his godfather’s killer. Bellatrix’s mad eyes glistened with malice, and he gulped. “Ready to pway wiff me again, Hawwy?” she whispered in his ear as she lightly pressed herself against him. “It’s going to be so much fun having you awound. Shall we start in he’aw? I haven’t kiwed any Muggows in just days and days.” Harry glared at her, then Snape, and marched out the door. The procession of Amycus Carrow, Severus Snape, Harry and Bellatrix followed by Rudolphus Lestrange walked down the road and out of the village. Carrow lead the way into a small grove of trees. Rudolphus roughly searched Harry, and tossed his wand and penknife to Snape. Bellatrix ran her finger across Harry’s face, then down his neck and arm, while she said, “So much fun having a pretty boy around again,” in a low, sultry tone. Her baby voice had disappeared. Rudolphus just snickered. Snape growled at her. “The Dark Lord will let you play after he is done with him, Bella. You need to leave him alone, for now. Let’s go.” He pulled out a gold chain, told everyone to take hold of it, and activated his portkey. The Death Eaters enjoyed having Harry to kick around. Voldemort questioned him several times a day, then assigned one or more of his lackeys to “encourage better cooperation from their guest”. Harry never said a word or made a sound, except when he screamed under the Cruciatus. He was beaten, whipped, cut with small knives, half-drowned, but was never turned over to Bellatrix. He was grateful for small favors. She came to his room every night to whisper in his ear what she was going to do to him as she dragged her fingers or her wand over the body parts she intended to torture, or sever, or whatever her twisted obsession was at the moment. Eventually, she would tire of her game and leave him to find something more rewarding to play with, but she would always return the next evening. Fifteen days after the Death Eaters captured him, he and Draco were left in the drawing room that was the scene of most of Harry’s ‘interrogation’. All the other Death Eaters left with Voldemort to go punish a Ministry official who wasn’t cooperating with Voldemort’s demands. Voldemort promised them a Muggle hunt afterwards, but Draco was assigned to take him back to his room and guard him while everyone else was gone. For some reason, for the first time in his captivity, he was allowed to walk back to the room unrestrained. Perhaps Draco figured he couldn’t do much to him after all his time of being tortured, but the first moment Draco turned his back on Harry, he grabbed the nearest heavy, blunt object and brained him with it. Sneaking out of the ruined house the Death Eaters kept him in wasn’t even difficult, despite Harry’s missing glasses. Harry felt a guilty sort of gratitude that he and Draco were alone in the house. He was almost glad when Voldemort was torturing him, because that meant that they couldn’t be out hurting his friends or other innocent people. But he was much more glad now to be alone, even though he knew that they were probably hurting someone else instead. He didn’t know how much more he could take of the torture, but he felt guilty that his chance to escape was probably coming at the cost of suffering and death for someone else. That didn’t keep him from moving as fast as his battered body could away from the house. Harry made it about a mile before he collapsed in a thicket of thorny bushes. His whole body ached, some parts more than others, and something was wrong with one of his legs. He hoped that he was far enough away to avoid being found before he could rest up and get farther away. Alas, his hopes were thwarted by none other than his favorite former professor — favorite, because he’d never been so glad to know that he’d never have to sit through another class with one of them again, as he was when Snape left the school. Severus Snape returned from the Ministry official’s torture and murder as quickly as he possibly could, but the boy was already gone. Draco was dead, killed with the large, heavy vase lying next to his body. Snape tracked the runaway, erasing his trail as he went, and soon found him collapsed beneath a bush over a mile from the house. ‘Stronger than I thought possible at this point,’ he thought to himself as he batted his way through Potter’s feeble attempts to keep him from picking him up. Grunting, he stepped clear of the brush and disapparated with a small pop. After several staggered apparation jumps to throw off any pursuit, Severus activated a portkey. He and Harry appeared in the wood near the edge of the Burrow’s wards. He knew that he couldn’t enter the wards without a lot of work, and he didn’t have time to try. Instead, he sent his Patronus to find Ginny and give her the message to come find Harry. Only a few minutes later, Ginny burst through the back door of the house. She sprinted past the gardens, across the grounds and into the trees. She slowed as she approached the edge of the wards on the grounds of her home. She was anxious, but not thoughtless. Suddenly, she saw Harry leaning against a tree just outside the wards. He looked dead, or near to it. He didn’t have his glasses, his face looked like one massive multicolored bruise, with many cuts, and his clothes were in shreds. The rest of his body, what she could see, was cut and bruised as well, and it looked like at least one of the bones in his right leg was broken. She ran straight to him. “Merlin, Harry, what have they done to you!” she sobbed as she touched his face with her hand. She started to pull her wand, but suddenly stopped when she saw a wand tip just centimeters from her nose. She followed it up to the hand holding it and then the arm to the face of the man, standing in shadows, dressed all in black. “You!” she hissed. “Take hold of Mr. Potter and help him to stand,” said the man in a low, menacing voice. “We are taking a trip.” |
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