𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄

Part 2

As soon as Draco is down, Harry grabs Draco's wand and puts him into a full body bind. The spell comes out so strongly that he can hear Draco's ankle bones clack as his limbs snap together. Draco is bleeding from the spot where Harry struck him, and he seems to be unconscious. Harry flies from the room, panting, and moves into the hall stealthily, listening for the sounds of footsteps, Draco's wand raised in front of him. It occurs to him that he should probably try to escape without his own wand, that he doesn't have much time and that this opportunity is more than he deserves after his failure in the last battle, but his wand, by its very specificity, has saved him in the past, and he can't leave it. He creeps into a hall bathroom and searches the cabinet under the sink as quietly as he can, looks under the bath mat and even checks the tank of the toilet. Next he sneaks into the pink bedroom and turns over cushions and rugs, opening drawers as slowly as possible and waiting always for someone to come looking for Draco and discover what's happened. No one comes, and as he moves into the third bedroom he begins to suspect that Draco might have been telling the truth. The cottage feels empty and it's so quiet. Still, he sneaks into the third bedroom as silently as possible, and that's where he finally finds his wand, stuffed under the mattress of the bed. Leave it to Draco to be so terribly uncreative.

Once he has his wand in hand, he stuffs Draco's into the back pocket of his trousers and prepares to Apparate away. He starts to feel the usual pulling feeling in his chest, but other than that, nothing happens. He's still standing in the middle of the bedroom, in the exact same spot. He tries again, and nothing. Something is blocking him, or maybe he's still just too weak? Which wouldn't make sense, because he was able to Apparate into the cottage when he was nearly dead and had not even a bowl of porridge on his stomach. Frustrated, he goes to the window to yank it open and leave the old fashioned way; perhaps once he's far enough from the cottage Apparating will work. But the lock on the window won't budge, as if it's rusted shut. Groaning inwardly and beginning to feel panicked, afraid that whoever is staying here with Draco will surely return to the cottage soon, Harry steps back and casts an unlocking spell on the window as quietly as he can. Nothing happens, just as nothing happened with the door when he tried to use the same spell to get inside the cottage. Harry tries the room's other window, and the effect is the same. He doesn't want to risk sneaking to the front door, so he retrieves a poker from the hearth by the bedroom's large fireplace, walks up to the window, shuts his eyes tightly, and swings as hard as he can. The poker bounces off the window as if it's rubber, and Harry narrowly avoids being smacked in the face with it as it bounds back at him.

His heart begins to race. Something's not right here; the Death Eaters must have put a spell on the cottage that prevents him from escaping. He begins to beat against the window with his fists, but they only bounce off the way the poker did, the window undulating against them, the glass unbroken. Groaning with fury, the adrenaline rush that had buoyed him as he tried to make his great escape morphing into utter panic, he runs out into the house's main room, risking the onset of an entire den full of Death Eaters. But there is no one there, and why should there be? The house is containing him well enough without the help of the people who put these locking spells upon it: the door responds to no amount of clawing or pounding or kicking. Defeated, Harry sinks to the ground in the foyer, panting his breaths. His headache has returned, and the wound at his side is burning as if it's been reopened by his struggles. He shuts his eyes and puts his head against the door.

"I just want it to stop," he cries brokenly, as if he can beg his way out of the spell that's keeping him imprisoned. He thinks again of killing himself, but he knows that he wouldn't be able to go through with it, even with the promise of long days, weeks, or for all he knows years of pain and humiliation at the hands of Voldemort and the others. For some reason, the sight of the neat little cottage with its arched ceilings and stone fireplaces is more cruel than any dungeon or prison cell he could imagine being locked into. Perhaps they left Draco here to "guard" him only so that they could have a great laugh when Harry thought he'd bested them by outwitting his witless warden. Harry hits the door with his fist, a weak, pathetic gesture of protest. He wonders how much longer he has until his real enemies arrive.