"You rat bastard!" Harry shouted, and as Snape came near, he pulled back his hand and slapped the man across the face, just as hard as he could manage. In his condition, it wasn't that fierce a blow, but of course all that mattered was that it appear authentic. "Albus Dumbledore trusted you! But you're on the madman's side, after all! I knew it! I knew it all along!"
Voldemort laughed in true enjoyment. "Ah, his hate before is nothing to what it is, now, Severus. Well done. Well done, indeed."
Harry raised his hand to hit Snape again, but the sight of Voldemort's upraised wand gave him an excuse to back down. "Enough of that, young Harry," the Dark Lord intoned. "Or I shall have to use Imperio on you. Should you like to try resisting it again, and in your current state?" He curled a contemptuous lip.
"My Lord," Snape was saying, on his knees by then, removing his black leather gauntlets even as he spoke. "My hands, the light magic, your potions, my Lord..."
"Oh, we won't bloody your pure precious hands," Voldemort laughed. "Lucius has more finesse than that." He turned to Harry. "Get on your knees!"
Harry stayed upright, defiant. Proud. If the bastard wanted him on his knees, he could damned well make him kneel. Let him try Imperio. It would be a victory, of sorts, that he wouldn't bend, not on his own.
Voldemort, though, was relishing another kind of force, this evening. The Muggle kind. "Severus," he prompted. "Now."
Snape stepped behind him, and then Harry felt warm hands on his shoulders, the grip firm enough to leave bruises as he shoved Harry straight down and forced his legs to bend. It isn't real, Harry told himself beneath the fire. It's a feint, just like those last few Potions classes I attended. It has to look real; it has to look sadistic, and vicious in intent...
But it felt real enough as Snape grasped his arms from behind and dragged them remorselessly together until the slightest move on Harry's part sent agony surging through his shoulders. He didn't think he could wrench himself away without dislocating a joint. Not that that was a remote danger. Dehydrated, starved, still-half weak from Apparating, he wasn't in any shape to brawl, and even if he were, he was still only sixteen and small for his age.
"Lucius, up," Voldemort was saying, his robes rustling as he conjured a chair and seated himself to watch the show. "You shall have your revenge, now, but at my direction, is that much clear?"
"Yes, my Lord," murmured Lucius as he crawled to the seated man and kissed his robes. Voldemort patted him on the head much as though a kinder man might pet a favored hound. "Conjure needles, my Lucius," he throatily whispered, holding out his hand. "The boy hates needles, as you well know."
A pile of glimmering silver shards appeared in Voldemort's palm.
"Oh, you can do better than that, surely?"
A larger pile materialized, the needles thick and stout like the ones Aunt Petunia used to use with yarn. Only sharper. Far, far sharper.
"The boy's afraid," Snape sneered from behind him, though the hands holding his arms in place said something different. His teacher's fingers shifted in a deliberate motion. It wasn't methodical, and it wasn't anything as obvious as a caress, but it served to bolster Harry, nonetheless. It reminded Harry that however it looked to the rest of the gathering, he in fact wasn't alone.
"He should be afraid," Lucius darkly replied, holding out his own hands for the needles. Voldemort dropped them one by one into his palms.
"The face, first," came Voldemort's command. "And then you may indulge your wildest dreams, Lucius, but for one thing. Save his eyes for last."
"Yes, my Lord," said Lucius, silver gaze glinting in the moonlight. He'd never replaced his hood.
Even knowing his dreams, even knowing what must be, when a needle came into his line of vision, Harry did again what he'd done in the cell. He reached consciously down into the well of anger, hate, and horror that had been so much of his life, and tried to pull forth an explosive force the likes of which had made those stones half-vanish. But this time, there was little answering reaction. Was he too weak from thirst to manage it? Had he drained himself too far with that last huge surge of magic?
He made the needle heat a bit; that was all.
Not the result he wanted, for Lucius had taken his gloves off as well--for dexterity, Harry supposed--and when he felt the sharp shard of metal warming, his silver eyes narrowed in appreciation. "Ah, very nice," he smoothly remarked, before glancing back at his master. "Heated needles, I should think, my Lord."
He spelled his hands to not get blistered, then used Calorum to make the needle glow red-hot, and brought it close again. Harry tried to bear it bravely, not even whimpering as the thick, ugly needle came close, but when heat and pain pierced slowly through his cheek, he sucked in a harsh breath and clenched his teeth, and whimpered, his eyes filling with tears.
"Auspicious beginning," Lucius murmured, smiling, though the expression didn't reach his eyes. He wasn't sated. Far from it. "Are you sure you wouldn't like one, Severus? Just one?" Another hot needle danced before Harry's eyes as Malfoy held it up for Snape to see.
"You know I can't," Snape growled, shifting to hold both Harry's wrists with one hand. His free arm came around the boy in an embrace that pinned Harry's back against the length of Snape's torso. "Do your worst. For me."
"Save his eyes for last," Voldemort repeated, his voice gone lazy with pleasure. "But do be creative until then. Make the insolent child ask me for mercy."
I don't ask for things I won't get, Harry clearly thought, some part of him satisfied to see Voldemort startled by the claim, though it warned him to keep clear hold of his protective image. I don't. I won't. I can't...
"And make him scream," added Voldemort, leaning back in his chair, hands held idly in his lap.
And that, Harry couldn't deny his captors, though he did try. Six times he felt the blazing needles shoved viciously through his flesh. Six times he held his breath and grit his teeth and waited for the pain to pass. But all Lucius did in response was conjure larger needles, and begin plunging them like daggers into places where they'd scrape against bone.
Harry screamed, then. He screamed himself hoarse, and thrashed against Snape's tightening hold, and before it was over, he lost all semblance of control and bucked like a wild horse, but Snape held him in place, for all of it, every bit, even the last. By then Harry was stripped completely naked, and flat on his back on the dirt. Every inch of his skin was riddled with puncture wounds, needles sticking out of him at hideous angles. More needles were fully embedded inside him, stabbing the interior of his back and legs every time he breathed. They were spelled to stay hot, to burn him for just as long as it pleased Voldemort to watch him suffer.
And then, as the sound of his last screams rebounded off the distant mountains and echoed in the clearing, the worst came to pass.
Lucius sat atop him on his chest, and another man held his legs, but it was Snape who had his large palms affixed to either side of his face. Snape whose thumbs and fingers pried his eyes open and held them that way as Lucius did as the Dark Lord had commanded, and saved his eyes for last.
Harry prayed for death, though he wasn't disposed to go quietly. When Malfoy's fingers passed too close to his teeth, he growled just like a dog and tore a vicious chunk from the bastard's hand, spitting it out like so much offal.