Spells and Handcuffs (Remus Lupin)

Prisoner

I was a prisoner. I had no idea whether time passed, I could only guess whether it was day or night. In this basement, I only knew when it was daylight by the slim shaft of light that penetrated under the only door. It was thick oak, new and strong. It was out of place against the walls. They were crumbling. If I took the edge of my nail I could dig at the softening mortar between the distressed bricks. It was the damp that did it I thought. No matter the weather outside, the floor was always wet in here; probably an underground spring just outside the walls soaked the mud I slept on. I prayed constantly for this cube of brick to decay faster, a storm to knocked it down. But deep in my heart, I knew it was my body that will go first.

I was a prisoner of Voldemort and his servant Peter Pettigrew. At first they tried to control me, but I resisted. My whole being fought against their voices in my head. These were constant battles or struggles to break my will, they had already done it once. My whole existence had been gripped by the idea that I should not give up this time.

Then came the tortures. In the end, it wasn't dying that scared me but pain. My pain was an icy wind choking the breath from my lungs and making a noose around my neck. It cut right to my bones and gripped my brain in its freezing claws. My heart constricted in its wake as if not sure if it should go on beating. I screamed again and again, my screams echoing in the damn walls, ricocheting in them and coming back to me as if they could causing me more pain. Each time I prayed that it would all end faster, or that my heart would stop, or that they would get tired of torturing me. The only thought that remained in my mind, as the pain burned inside me, was my thought of Remus. I was clinging to wanting to see him again so strongly that everything seemed a little more bearable. In time, I even put up with the fact that the pain was not so strong anymore. I just had to hold out a little longer and I would see him. A thought bordering on insanity, but keeping me from losing my mind.

I didn't know why they kept me alive. They couldn't control me. It may have given them a pleasure to torture me, but I did not ask them to stop, I didn't beg, I screamed but I didn't cry. When they got tired of playing with me, they locked me back to the basement. Maybe they kept me alive because they fed the damn snake with my blood. For several days, Wormtail came and cut my arm to drain some of my blood. Then he gave me a potion, I suspected, to recover the lost amount of blood quickly.

I was not alone there in the basement. My boss, Barthemius Crouch, was also their prisoner. He seldom regained consciousness, often hallucinating and delusional. In the few chances I could talk to him, he repeated that it was all his fault. That his son would help Voldemort regain his body and full strength.

It must have been a few days since Wormtail had gone down here in the basement. I could determine the time only from the pain of my empty stomach. I could feel the ropes digging into my wrists and ankles; my left cheek lay firmly in the muddy dust that coated the cold floor. I was on the border between sleep, consciousness, and madness. I strained my ears for sounds, for voices, or for screams. 

"Are you awake? "Crouch startled me.

"Yes, I think. I can no longer say for sure when I am dreaming and when I am awake. "I replied, trying to to sit down and leaning against the wall behind me.

"Me too. "he sighed. He approached me. My eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and I could look at him. His face looked even paler than before, his hair disheveled and dirty. But his eyes were not taken away as usual. They stared at me with burning clarity.

"Why aren't you tied up?" I asked him, trying to divert my thoughts from the pain in my stomach.

"They think I'm harmless now. Maybe I'm really is ... Come, let me try to untie you." and he began clumsily pulling the ropes with which I was tied. However, after a while he succeeded.