Pierced (Completed)

Chapter 4: Despair

"THE GREATEST HAZARD OF ALL, LOSING ONE'S SELF, CAN OCCUR VERY QUIETLY IN THE WORLD, AS IF IT WERE NOTHING AT ALL. NO OTHER LOSS CAN OCCUR SO QUIETLY; ANY OTHER LOSS-AN ARM, A LEG, FIVE DOLLARS,  A WIFE, ETC.-IS SURE TO BE NOTICED."-SOREN KIERKEGAARD

*****

The dungeons were dark, cold, smelly, and isolated. After viciously attempting to break out of the cell he was being held in for a good ten minutes, Harry had decided that it was impossible and began thinking.

By his best estimate, this was his third night in captivity. He was starving. His stomach was constantly squirming in pain, making him cringe and writhe. What was worse was that he could feel his mind slipping, like a more violent, feral part of him wanted to take over. It was constant battle to keep what Harry dubbed his 'Inner Vampire' in check. More often than he would have liked, he would begin laughing hysterically as he mentally tore Dumbledore's head off or killed Snape by ripping each and every one of his limbs off. He would calm down from these graphic visions to find that his fangs were fully extended, his muscles tensed.

Moving around a lot seemed to bring that side out of him more easily, along with any sudden shift in mood. When people would walk by he would sometimes burst into violent spasms, the smell of their blood urging him to give over to his inner vampire.

So he stayed still, sitting up against the wall and thinking with all of his might how to best escape this mess he had gotten himself into.

Your little mudblood slut ratted you out, Potter.

Harry clenched his fists, glancing to his left at the unforgiving stone wall, where he could feel Hermione on the other side. She had to have been held in a cell similar to his, for she hadn't moved much over the past three days. Unlike him, though, she had been treated to food and water.

Harry didn't comprehend what Malfoy had gleefully told him at first. It took him until the blond git's smirking face had left view to figure out that he meant Hermione had told someone (probably Professor Dumbledore) his secret. There was no way she would do that, though, not after she had promised him she wouldn't.

But what if, in the end, she trusted Dumbledore to the extent that she believed he could be told? She would do it if she thought it would help him.

Then why was she in a cell? Did she try and stop Dumbledore after she had realized her mistake?

Harry's brain was hurting as he tried to figure out what was going on while simultaneously fighting off starvation and his inner vampire.

Despite having nothing to do over these past few days, there was never a dull moment inside his cell. He mostly though of his escape plans, but those all depended on hypothetical situations, i.e. they come in to try and stake him or lead him out to let him out to burn in the sun. Then it all depended on how many and which guards they used. When he wasn't thinking he worked on strengthening his vampire powers. He could now read minds from over 40 feet away and only needed to have the person in his peripheral vision, and he had become more in tune with his senses.

He was finally understanding what it meant that he was specifically designed to hunt humans. To get back at his captors, whenever a person came to check up on him now he would delve in their minds and discover what their greatest fear was. He would torment them mentally with it until they were out of earshot…by the end they were usually running in fear. He didn't really enjoy it much, but he figured that they made good practice since they deserved it. Sometimes, when a girl came down to check on him, he would unbutton the top few buttons of his shirt and muss up his hair. He had almost gotten Pansy Parkinson to unlock his cell for him, promising her that he would do whatever she wanted in his most seductive voice. After that, they never sent a female and only sent the males in pairs. For some reason, when Harry had tried the same technique on Goyle to find out if it worked on males, Malfoy had to slap his face to bring him out of it.