A Means of Survival – Chapter 18 – Reconnoitering

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Chapter 18 – Reconnoitering

It was the weekend and for once, Harry was not in the infirmary. He had been discharged that Saturday morning and had gone back to the Gryffindor tower in order to try and possibly catch up on some of his wayward homework assignments.

Snape had left him around noon on Friday, to go prepare his lesson plans for that afternoon’s classes. Before leaving, he had ruffled Harry’s already ruffled hair and had smirked at him. Harry thought that was as close as the man ever got to smiling, and therefore was internally pleased with the sight.

Luckily the password had not changed in the past couple of days, allowing him to pass by the Fat Lady without too much problem. Although it was still relatively early for a Saturday morning, he was surprised to see that there were a fair number of students milling about in the common room already. The sight struck him as slightly odd until he realized with a start that most of them were redheaded boys. He looked around for Ginny and caught sight of her huddled in the corner next to Neville, of all people. Their eyes met and he waved hello. She waved back meekly before turning bright red and hiding behind Neville’s much larger frame.

The noise of the room—which hadn’t been too impressive, considering the number of Weasley siblings together at one time—suddenly died off completely as they noticed Harry’s presence.

It was a moment of silence that was followed by pure bedlam, as they all rushed at him at once. It was a good thing that he had spent a fair amount of time around them that previous summer, or it was likely that he would have been overwhelmed.

They were all speaking at once, and although the conversations were fairly muddled, the issue was soon made clear: Ron was apparently missing. Harry listened in growing exasperation until he had finally had enough and after shouting loudly at them all, he finally got them to calm down enough to hear precisely what was going on.

Percy, although usually a royal pain in the arse, took point as he was wont towards doing, and hastily explained the issue.

“So you see Harry, we figure that the last one to see him was you. Neville here,” there he stopped to wave vaguely in the direction of the younger boy, “says that before he lost consciousness, he could still hear the sound of your voice.”

From there, the twins jumped in to add their two bits.

“Right,” they said in unison, looking at him intently.

“So we thought—,” said Fred, or possibly George.

“That given the sorry state—,” quipped George, or was it Fred? Harry was too tired to figure it out.

“You must have been in,” they said, speaking simultaneously once again.

“To have gotten laid up—,” Fred said. Harry was almost positive that it was Fred speaking, really.

“A full day longer—” pointed out George.

“—Than Neville here,” they said, both pointing directly at the smaller roundish boy.

“There must have been—,” George continued.

“A fight or ambush of some kind,” Fred said, finishing with a flourish. Harry shook his head mildly to try to make sense out of what he had just been told.

“So was there? A fight?” Ginny asked, peering closely at him from where she stood. It annoyed him to no end that they were nearly the same height, even though he was a full year older.

Harry, having just been released from Madam Pomfrey’s care that morning, decided that healed or not, he did not want to go into a detailed conversation with the overexcited Weasley siblings while standing in a corner surrounded by the lot of them. He looked around the room before spotting an empty couch and resolutely made his way there before deigning to answer. Besides, it was a question that he would have most preferred to have avoided discussing—at all. However, given his very clear lack of choice, he felt that the walk had at least allowed him some stall time.

He sat down on the couch, slightly disappointed that the world hadn’t ended during the short walk there. Ginny sat shyly down next to him, before insistently waving Neville over to join them. Percy, like the young gentleman he was, pulled up a chair primly, while the twins dropped lightly onto the floor at their feet.

Harry saw Percy roll his eyes at twins for what he likely thought of as childish behavior. Under other circumstances, Harry might have laughed at him with Ron—but now that thought merely served as a reminder to the incredible pain that he had felt throughout his body just prior to succumbing to the darkness of unconsciousness that previous Thursday.

Neville looked painfully at him as Ginny once again reiterated her desire for him to tell his account about what had happened with Ron after Potions on that fateful day.

“Neville’s been less than useful in giving us a clear account of occurred then,” she said, sticking her tongue out at Neville, obviously miffed at him for his lack of details.

“Wait, so hasn’t anyone heard from Ron since then?” Harry asked, breaking into the spat before it could probably get going.

“No one has, mate.” Fred said, looking at him with a strangely somber look on his face.

“Do your parents know?” Harry asked, suddenly becoming aware of the large scale problem.

“Mum suspects something, but we’ve been holding out on her in hopes of finding out something more definitive from you, chap,” Percy said, obviously trying to sound regal and failing miserably at it. The worry for his younger brother was clearly evident on his face, and Harry noticed that all of the Weasley’s looked much more haggard than usual.

“What did Neville say about that day?” Harry asked, still actively avoiding the act of recounting that awful experience.

“Told us about the lights goin’ out—,” the twins said before being cut off by Neville himself.

“’Cause I was trying to screw up Zabini’s wicked aim with those chairs he kept using his wand to toss at your head, Harry,” the boy said, looking anxiously up at Harry with an obvious need for reassurance written into face.

“It was a good idea,” Harry said, somewhat absentmindedly as his brain was once again caught in the vivid memory of the incident.

Neville was still looking uncertainly at him, so he leaned over to him, touched his shoulder and said, “Really Neville. It was a brilliant idea.”

Neville responded with a bright flash of teeth as he smiled, obviously pleased with Harry’s compliment. Harry found himself entranced by the change in disposition the compliment had made upon the slightly overweight boy.

Maybe he just needs to be complimented once a day, kind of like a flower needs to be watered in hot weather, he mused to himself.

“But that’s where his account more or less trailed off,” Ginny said, pointedly bringing Harry’s attention back to their main objective.

“There was a fight,” Harry admitted finally, closing in eyes in remembrance.

“Yeah?” One of the twins said, prompting him to continue.

“Ron had nearly choked Draco Malfoy to death in class, while Snape was briefly in his office getting something. After class then, while Snape was taking Malfoy to the Infirmary, I saw Ron and Zabini standing in the back, just laughing it up. It pissed me off, so I went back there and told him so and why.” Harry said, pausing to take a deep breath, trying to remember just how it had started.

Abruptly, he found himself remembering the flying chair and Neville’s shouted warning to him only seconds before. He remembered Ron laughing at him as he fought to keep from getting brained by it. And then, he remembered hurling himself at his infuriating friend, intent on pounding some sense into him.

He hadn’t even told Snape about all of that, because the man hadn’t asked him any more than just the names of his–.

Of my attackers, Harry thought painfully.

“Zabini started the fight by levitating projectiles and tossing them at my head with his wand.” Harry said slowly, still lost in the strength of his recollections.

“Projectiles?” One of the twins asked hesitantly.

“The chairs,” Neville clarified.

Thanks Neville, he said in his head, mentally thanking the other boy for being succinct with his clarification of Harry’s account.

“Neville yelled out a warning to me, allowing me to dive out of the way safely.” Harry said, pausing as the twins jumped up, and energetically clapped his friend on the back in congratulations. Harry waited until they sat back down again to continue.

“While I was on the floor, Ron started laughing at me, saying something about my cleaning the floor with my scuffling.”

“Zabini was still tossing chairs at this point too,” Neville said, adding on to his story in the lull created while Harry took a much needed breath.

His ribs, although technically healed, were still rather sore. He rather hoped that the twins didn’t start heartily pounding him on the back as well; he wasn’t sure if he could handle that.

“True,” Harry said, when the boy had said his piece.

“My brother is such a jerk sometimes,” Ginny said apologetically.

“Yeah well, what had set all of this off to begin with was my getting angry with him for laughing at Draco after almost killing him with his bare hands. Hearing him laugh at me then, all because I was trying to keep my head in one piece, well that made me pretty mad.”

“So you kicked his arse,” George—he was almost positive that it was George—said nonchalantly.

“We would have done the same thing,” Fred said, sounding very serious all of a sudden—a phenomenon that made Harry suddenly extremely wary about being so close to the mischievous set of twins; he knew that they were rarely serious, except when trying to get away with something.

Percy, noticing Harry’s sudden change in attitude, quickly put two and two together and grinned at him knowingly.

“Occasionally they do find cause to become serious,” the older boy said solemnly. “Mind, usually it’s while they’re asleep, but—,” he broke off as the twins attacked him, obviously trying to tickle him into submission.

“Oy! Geroff!” He shouted breathlessly out, suddenly strongly reminding Harry of how Ron generally sounded when attacked likewise. It made him hurt all over as he wondered what was going on with his friend.

Finally though, they let up and Percy was sitting upright once more, only now he was glaring in exasperation at his two younger brothers for their childish behavior in causing his hair to be mussed. Harry, who was permanently cursed with mussed hair, couldn’t really see the issue with that, but then again, everyone knew that Percy was a different sort altogether.

Beside him, Ginny rolled her eyes at all of their supposed inane tendencies. Harry didn’t mind it so much though, because even when they were annoyed with each other, they always seemed to work things out again.

Plus, he thought seriously to himself, whenever one is in trouble, they all seem to come together as a family in response. The obviously loving environment that pervaded their home, and their interactions as well, made him ache with secret longing for that kind of existence. He snuck a glance at Neville, who was sitting on the couch with a wishful expression on his face, likely for the same reasons.

Neville was no orphan and seemed to have a great deal of family around him, but there was still an unspoken sadness around the fact that he had been raised by only his Gran, and not his parents. From time to time, Harry found himself wondering what had happened to them, but as of yet had not asked the other boy about it.

“So,” Harry said, suddenly desperate to finish the story and get away from them all by passing out in his much missed bed.

They looked at him intently, and Ginny nodded quietly at him to continue where he had left off.

“I went to hit him and Zabini tossed another chair at my head for my effort. Neville?” He said, turning to the other boy to allow him his piece of the story.

“Huh?” The boy answered, obviously caught off guard. “Oh, right. I saw Zabini throwing all those chairs and suddenly thought to myself that it might save us, especially Harry really, a lot of trouble if he didn’t have to keep ducking chairs. Plus,” the boy said nervously, “I thought he might eventually get lucky, and then Harry would seriously get hurt.” He said, turning red and ducking behind a cushion.

Harry grinned and patted the boy on his shoulder, showing that he appreciated the thought.

Neville poked his head back out, and upon catching Harry’s grin, smiled hesitantly back as well before completely his bit.

“So then I remembered me a spell that my Gran used to use on me when I was just a little’un, when she was tired of my making trouble for her. She’d just extinguish all of the lights with this spell and then wait in the dark until I got the message.”

“What was the spell?” Harry asked, intrigued.

“Pan Nox,” the other boy answered proudly.

“Makes sense,” Percy said quietly.

“Well it most definitely worked,” Harry said, nodding again at the boy.

“So, with the lights out, Zabini just tossed one more chair at where I had been. Ron and Harry were moving around, but I had been pretty well camped out behind a table. Apparently Zabini’s memory is pretty sharp, because he pegged me directly, dropping it in just perfectly. Hurt like hell.” Neville said, reveling in the shock on his friend’s faces at his use of a semi-curse word.

“But you said before that you could still hear Harry’s voice?” Ginny asked then, somewhat unsure sounding.

“I wasn’t knocked unconscious, but I did get pretty woozy. When I tried to stand up, my knees buckled and I dropped like that,” the boy said, snapping his fingers smartly.

“Why did you try to get up at all then?” Ginny asked, obviously annoyed at his apparent idiocy.

“Ah well—,” Neville said, uncomfortably pulling at the collar of his shirt, even though it was just an old sleep shirt. He looked at Harry, obviously unsure about going on. Harry gave him a terse nod at his unspoken question.

“See,” Neville said, turning bright red again. He looked down at his hands nervously, licking his lips a bit.

“I got up, because I thought that Harry might need help,” he said quietly, as though ashamed.

“From Ron?” Fred inquired incredulously.

“He was hollering,” Neville said, very uncomfortably, visibly edging away from them all.

Harry decided that it was time to relieve him of his discomfort.

“It was probably more like screaming, actually,” Harry admitted lightly, shrugging.

“But—,” Ginny said, not finishing her statement and biting her lip instead.

“Let him finish Ginny,” Percy said quietly to his little sister.

And so, with a quavering breath, Harry laid it out for them.

When the lights had gone out, he had seen something that had pretty well freaked him out. Automatically his body had snapped into flight mode, and he had tried to get away just by backing up wildly on his hands and feet, bum sweeping the ground and all.

Ron had looked at him like a demon out of one of his nightmares. His eyes were glowing bright florescent green, and in that moment he had realized that whatever was going on wasn’t something that they could just talk out, like usual.

He’d jumped as he’d heard the telltale sounds of a chair hitting yet another surface, followed by a groan of pain that he now knew had come from Neville.

He had only looked away from Ron’s eyes for a moment, but the next thing he knew, Ron was right on top of him, wildly pounding his face with the broken leg of a chair.

Harry stopped his recounting of the story to look at Neville, who had begun shaking beside him.

“The way he laughed—,” Harry said, his voice quavering a bit as well.

“It was really freaky.” Neville said, pulling in a shuddery breath at the memory.

“It was unreal,” Harry said, rubbing his hands through his hair as though trying to wipe the memory away from his mind. He was resolutely not looking at the Weasleys, because he didn’t want to see their horror or shock, or whatever their reactions would be to his crazy story. Therefore, he plunged back into the story itself instead of waiting for one of them to prompt him again.

He told them about his shriek when Ron hit him so hard that he thought his nose had detached from his face. He told them about instinctually trying to hide, to get away him and his impromptu bat. He told them about what it had felt like when Ron had apparently foregone the bat and started kicking him completely at will in his sides, cracking two ribs in the process.

He was willing to tell them all of that, and yet there were still things that he held back from saying.

Ron had finally stopped his physical attack on him after apparently realizing that Harry was barely conscious enough spit blood out of his mouth, let alone hit back. He told them that, but what he didn’t say was the feeling of Ron leaning over to caress and knead his flaccid penis through his blood soaked pants. He didn’t tell them how Ron had then licked his ear and then whispered to him about what a ‘pretty young thing he was.’ He didn’t tell them that he had seen Ron and Zabini kiss out their way out the door, where a little light from the hallway had silhouetted their figures permanently in his mind’s eye.

He didn’t tell them that he heard them beginning to laugh again as they raced down the hallway—hand in hand—as he slipped into unconsciousness.

But as he could tell, when he opened his eyes from those awful memories, that what he had told them had been a little too much even so. They looked shell shocked and for the most part, were all staring uncomprehendingly at him. Next to him, Neville sat with his head in his hands, crying softly, leaving Harry to wonder if he had witnessed any of the stuff that Harry had not spoken about.

Harry felt like crying too, but thought that he would be better off doing so in his own bed. He somehow managed to find the strength to stagger up and off of the couch, and make it up the stairs before collapsing on his bed with a sharp pain filled intake of breath at doing so.

As he dropped heavily into the hard sleep of the weary, he realized that he had not set the silencing spell on his bed before doing so. However, his body no longer gave a damn as it slipped away from the waking world with barely another twitch.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that he had forgotten to take off his shoes.

…

In an unfamiliar room, a very messed up and worn out Ron Weasley blearily opened his eyes. He thought that he had been asleep, but wasn’t very sure he could altogether trust his memory. He thought he had dreamed something about a fight of some kind, followed by his being very amused by something wildly ridiculous.

Maybe the two memories are related, he thought in a very muddled sort of way.

He couldn’t remember where he was, what day it was, when he had last eaten, or where his pants were. Of all of those issues, the last one was the only one that actually seemed to be a bit of a pressing concern to him.

He had quickly realized he was nude, shortly after opening his eyes and looking down, but what he didn’t realize was the extremely haggard condition of his body itself. Anyone else would have been able to see the scores of bite marks up and down his torso and limbs, just from glancing at him. Furthermore, upon closer inspection, they would have clearly seen that the bite marks were definitely from at least five different people, if not more. Some of the bites had viciously torn into the skin of his young supple flesh; leaving jagged bruises, welts and gashes in him, most of which were tinged brightly with his own dried blood.

However, he felt virtually none of this upon waking; nor did he feel the painful ache of his empty stomach vying for attention with his very full bladder. He looked over to the left of him and found the dark smooth skin of Blaise peeking out from beneath a blue knit blanket. The sight of the boy made something surge in him, and he reached out for the boy without another thought, quickly setting himself to work on the other boy’s taut nipples with his mouth.

Soon they were both moaning their pleasure against one another’s equally battered bodies. The older boys sat around them watching in silence, knowing that they needed to be given food and water before another go around. Most of the boys’ bodies were littered with healed over scars that were very similar in appearance to those that Ron was sporting currently.

The ring of gaunt, hard looking boys did not eat or drink because they felt the need or desire for such objects, but rather because it was required in order to stay conscious enough to fuck. As Blaise and Ron had figured out earlier, it was solely the question of either being the fucker or the fucked. As long as they remembered to eat and drink occasionally, they could continue to do what they wanted. They even had blood replenishing potions on hand to use on those who passed out from too much blood loss.

For most of the boys in the room, school was no longer a concept that had any meaning attached to it. They were little better than a whorehouse, really. Older men would drop by occasionally, take what they want, and then leave, settling their payments with the man behind the scenes.

All throughout the circle, the boys sat grouped in sets of two, a magically created length of chain binding the two together at the ankle. It expanded in length when they needed it to, and then contracted when they didn’t. The chain was only superfluous really, since the pairs could not survive for very long in the absence of their partners. It was almost as though one joint mind controlled the two different bodies.

Another important detail that Ron had not noticied was the thin trickle of blood that had dried against the back of his thighs from the energetic qualities of those around him in the previous two days. They used lubrication, even a special kind with a healing salve built in, but even that had not completely stopped the drive of the Fless driven fucking against the mostly virgin arse.

The room was fairly large, but dank and shut off from the rest of the world. There were no windows in its walls, no obvious entries in or out, and no time pieces present. The floor was covered in self-cleaning mattresses and a few blankets here and there. On the far wall, next to one of the rarely used lavatories, someone had written—likely in blood—that Fless = Flesh in fairly large and jagged letters.

Although the author of that message was now rather dead—and his body hidden—the truth of the message was still alive.

It was something that Blaise and Ron would be taking to heart soon enough.