Dark Lord's Pet

Betrayed

Harry

When his eyes opened, Harry knew immediately that something was wrong. It was pitch black, and he could hear the faint sound of water drip, drip, dripping onto a puddle. It was like when the roof was leaking, and Aunt Petunia had put a bucket under it. He didn't think he was dead, there was no bright light, no pain, just the cold damp stone beneath him, and a heavy opessive silence, apart from the dripping that is. 

Harry sat up and hugged his knees tight to his chest, noticing that, form the first time, he was naked. Terror seized him, and he wondered if his uncle had locked him in the cellar that could only be opened from the outside. It was next to his Aunt's marigolds, and his uncle had only ever put him their once before, when he kept getting all the school letters. Suddenly, he remembered what his uncle had said as he'd tried to kill him. He said, "I'm going to kill you, you freak! Not even the money the old freak, Dumbledore, really the names you freaks have, not even the money he paid us to abuse you before and when you went to that- that school, is enough to keep me from killing you now!"

He started rocking back and forth, his breaths coming too fast. Hogwarts was his home, it was his home! And Dumbledore had been like a grandfather, wise, a little batty, and above all, someone who cared for him! Who had Harry's best interests at heart! If Dumbledore were  a fraud, were Ron and Hermione even his friends? Or had they just been paid to pretend?

He didn't have anyone. Not a single living soul. His parents, he supposed, must have loved him if they died to protect him, but they hadn't protected him further than that. Instead of placing him into a family where he would be loved, he'd been sent to the Dursleys. Maybe, maybe he had one person who loved him. That really only left Hedwig. Who was he kidding? The only creature in the world to care about him was an owl, and even she bit him frequently.

With a strange sudden certainty, he knew he wasn't with his relatives. No. If he'd still been there, Uncle Vernon wouldn't have stopped trying to kill him, and he'd still be in agony until his uncle managed to do the deed properly. Harry cursed his magic, cursed it for keeping him alive through all the abuse and neglect. Even the world's favorite villain psychopath couldn't kill him all those long years ago, when he was a happy, ignorant toddler. Yet here he was.

Harry forced his breathing to slow, his nails to release their grip on his arms, and gradually, as his breaths evened out, his heart rate did too.

Standing up, he slowly shuffled forward, his arms outstretched, until his hands met metal. He grasped it, recognizing the feel of bars beneath his hands and started once again in panic. He quickly made a lap, hand to the wall, only stumbling once over what he discovered to be a bucket.

The two smooth, seamless stone walls and the walls formed of rusty iron bars formed a roughly square shaped cell. He huddled himself with his knees tucked to his chest in the all stone corner, and trying to maintain some warmth the only way he could.

Surprisingly enough, at that moment, he was calm. He already wanted to be dead, deserved it even, so he hoped desperately, when his body was wracked with powerful boughts of coughing, sneezing and sniffling, that at last death would come to collect him.