Stretching his arms as high as he could reach, he began to systematically pound on each and every one of the stones encasing him. Up and down the walls he struck and shoved, testing for weaknesses which, he found to his disgust, didn't exist, at least not physically.
What about magical weaknesses? he wondered. Of course he didn't have his wand, but he'd just recently been thinking about all the times during his childhood when he'd done magic without one. Accidental magic, perfectly normal for a wizard child. All it had taken was enough emotion, and the fierce, instinctive desire to do something with it.
Closing his eyes, Harry tried his best to summon those surges of fury that had plagued his childhood. From memory after memory --ones he didn't care if Voldemort saw-- he called forth the rage that used to make the glass over Dudley's photos shatter. The anger that had momentarily silenced Aunt Petunia once, that had more than once blown the door of the cupboard clear off its hinges.
Dark thoughts, dark memories, the dark core of himself, the one he hid from everyone else, the one that had started creeping forth after he'd seen Cedric die. Harry reached deep down into it, all the way through the fire shielding it, and reached for his power, for the magic he knew was there, the magic that was coming forth in dreams almost every time he slept.
All around him, the stone walls rippled, as though they were water disrupted by a falling rock.
Eyes closed, Harry didn't see it, but he felt it, that surge of magic flowing from his soul.
Reaching even deeper, he tried again, tried for an emotion worse than anger, worse than rage. A longing to kill, to murder, to destroy as he had been destroyed, day past endless day of never having had a family, never having had a home, nobody to care, nobody to give him the love that any child, even a freak, craved with every fibre of his soul...
Annihilate the dwelling standing at Number Four, Privet Drive, he heard Malfoy say again. Harry laughed, a harsh cackling sound more reminiscent of an insane old man than a sixteen-year-old boy, and snapping his eyes open, watched the laughter claw the walls. The air itself vibrated with the force of magic spilling past its confines. The blocks rippled again, then shimmered, the surface layers glowing translucent until it seemed he could see the very heart of the stones.
By that time, though, Harry had drained himself of all he was. His legs giving way beneath him, he slumped in the cell, falling gracelessly to the stone floor, gasping for breath. Every muscle in his body felt as though he'd been straining on his broom for hours, and his mind itself seemed to have become some mushy substance that could hardly even sustain Occlusion.
Somehow, though, he managed to keep that wall of fire up, right up to the moment when he lost consciousness and his head hit the wall with an ugly thump.
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Harry awoke to one thought only, and it wasn't fire.
Thirst.
Horrible, gut-draining thirst, his very bones parched with it.
How long had he been confined in this cell, how long had he lain unconscious, dreaming---
That was when it hit him, something that should have been obvious far, far sooner. My dreams! Remus was wrong; they aren't symbolic. They aren't about ambivalence, or being in a dark place emotionally, though by now I suppose I truly am. My dreams, though, are something else. They're literal. They're coming true....
In a rush of panic, Harry raised his wall of fire, scattering thoughts of loneliness and despair above it as he dove beneath to contemplate his dreams. Annihilate the dwelling standing at Number Four, Privet Drive... that must have happened by now; Malfoy gave the order hours and hours ago, if my thirst is any indication. So is Dudley safe? He wasn't inside when the house began to crumple, not that it means anything... The clearing, somebody coming, something coming.... I was seeing the site of the Death Eater meeting... this cell, the awful thirst.... it's all come true.
And so, what's coming next? The answer should have frightened him; it was terrifying enough. But somehow, it didn't. It gave him strength.
I'll survive, Harry realized. Whatever happens on Samhain, I will survive. I'll get back to Hogwarts... in the hospital wing. I'll be blinded, though, and my body horribly broken, but none of that will last. I've healed before; I'll heal again. I saw myself later, doing fine, though I was still kept away from the Tower, from my regular classes, for some reason. I was down in the dungeons, and I actually seemed comfortable being there... Oh, no, oh crap, it's true... I'm going to hit Ron for insulting Slytherins and laugh when Malfoy calls us brothers, and it wasn't a you-are-such-an-idiot laugh, either, it was more of a yeah-we-sure-are-brothers laugh...
I'm going to be screaming like a man possessed, screaming in Parseltongue... if that one was a seer dream, that is...
Something Trelawney had said impinged on his consciousness, then:
Dreams show you what may be, not what must be....
Harry groaned out loud, deciding that now was probably not the time to decide the Divination teacher knew what she was talking about. He had to cling to his dreams, even if the last few were more disturbing than he cared to think on. He could deal with that later. For now, he had to focus on the first few, and believe that no matter Voldemort's filthy plans for him, he would come through it alive.
It helped, knowing what was going to happen, at least in part. He'd be tortured, but not killed. He'd be blinded, but he would escape. Somehow. No need to dwell on the who or how, thoughts that were, at the very least, a peril he'd better avoid.
All he could do was prepare himself as best he could, Harry decided. Since knowing some things had really helped, he decided to figure out what else Voldemort had in story for him. He had more than dreams to help him with that; he had Lucius Malfoy's vicious comment about cupboards, about what else the Death Eaters might have learned from Uncle Vernon.
Uncle Vernon, who wanted nothing more than to see Harry suffer and die. Uncle Vernon, who was certainly dead himself by now, having chosen the wrong allies in his fight against Harry. Hmm, what would Vernon Dursley have talked about, besides cupboards? Of course, maybe he hadn't talked at all; everything Lucius knew could have been gleaned by means of Legilimency, but as far as Harry was concerned, it boiled down to the same thing. Uncle Vernon had meant him ill, after all.
So what could he reveal that would tend to really, really hurt Harry?
Hmm... Realizing he was getting distracted, Harry bolstered his wall of fire, spreading above it a few innocuous memories of learning to paint at primary school. Then, deep down in a safe place, he resumed his contemplations. Funny that Lucius would think the cupboard would frighten him. It didn't, though come to think of it, Harry had made the same assumption before, thinking that... certain people... who heard about it would believe him claustrophobic. Strange how life turned out. Sure, sure, he'd blasted the door off the cupboard a few times, but not because the enclosed space frightened him. He'd just wanted to show Uncle Vernon who was really in charge. The little bedroom itself was actually sort of comforting. Cozy. Back when he was little, and he used to wish he could have a hug, he'd huddled under his blankets at night and fantasized that the walls close in were cuddling him, that he was sleeping in a warm, safe embrace. Besides, even when it was daylight out, and he was playing with broken toys filched from the rubbish bin, he was relatively happy under the stairs. Nobody else ever came into his cupboard, so there was nobody in there to call him a freak and a misfit. And really, it wasn't like the cupboard had been a prison. He wasn't always locked in there. Most of the time he'd stayed in there by choice, because compared to a house full of Dursleys, a little room all to himself was a haven.