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Vivisection	By : LumosMinima Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 5978 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or the characters from it. I make no money writing fanfiction. No infringement is intended.

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He knew he was losing track of time – he wasn’t certain how long it’s been since he woke up alone in the St. Mungo’s ward for the incurably ill, setting chaos to the automated life support spells. Looking at the rare blossoms on the otherwise barren trees, and the sparse shoots of grass poking out from the charred ground under his feet, he guessed about ten months. It was August when he came to. It must be May now.

The Ministry, now composed of people Harry barely knew, or didn’t know at all -- fussed over, startling at his every sneeze and cough. They – the team of construction wizards, contracted and paid by the Ministry – built him a house, selecting the healthiest piece of ground available (still cursed-poisoned, but not nearly as bad as most other places), setting unplottability charms and all that. Deciding that Harry was still fragile and ready to fall apart, they decided not to burden him with any questions. They even set the place up for him -- a bed and a nightstand for the bedroom, a couch, a table with four chairs for the living room, another table with four more chairs for the kitchen. For the life of him, Harry couldn’t understand why they decided he needed that many tables and chairs – though he didn’t complain. He didn’t care one way or another.

He was made comfortable. He was offered a seat in the Wizengamot, which he had declined, figuring that the way he was spaced out half the time, he’d be as good as useless. He was left alone after that, but whenever he made an appearance in public, they still fawned over him and fussed over him. That puzzled him. True, he used to be the Head of the Order at one point, but those days were long gone.

Eventually, come Christmas, it dawned on him – he was the last one. The last one still alive of the Dumbledore’s Regiment (that’s what they called the former Order of the Phoenix these days).

He tried to wrap his mind around it, understand what it meant -- to be the last one. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was almost no pain. No grief as such. If anything, Harry simply felt as if he were picked up and transplanted into a different world – along with a handful of people he used to know: Luna Lovegood, Pomona Sprout, Amos Diggory, Stan Shunpike, Lee Jordan…

He spoke to Jordan a few times, but the conversations were awkward and strained. They let go of each other easily, without ever reconnecting.

Lovegood came to visit him once, drank all of his Firewhisky, shagged him silently and left the following morning before he woke.

Harry didn’t call after her, figuring she’d show up again when she felt like it. She didn’t.

He half-regretted that they hadn’t talked, but was almost relieved, too. There was really not much left to say, other than that everything was over, and life around them moved on.

It was amazing how, with so many people gone, the world continued to function. New people were stepping in, taking over the work left behind. The wizarding world turned out much bigger than Harry had imagined.

Though these days it seemed a great deal emptier.

*

The Centre for Redistribution was a long one-storey building in the middle of a wasteland that, with the wilted grass and ever-dry ground, seemed like it didn’t know the meaning of spring. Then again, much of the wizarding world was like that. Harry had asked, just once, how long it’d be until the Wizarding World would be in crisis, with most of the land being unfertile. He was assured that there would be no crisis, there were ways of working around it all. Harry almost believed it, although he still had a vague suspicion that they were all just living their last days, using up of what was left of the earth.

Harry walked the deserted hallways, accompanied by John Dawlish, who was unbelievably chatty, answering every question in a way so detailed it was enough to fill a book.

Harry nodded absently to another one of Dawlish’s tirades, and wondered if he should just turn back and go home. Because, really, it made no sense for him to be here. Seeing a traitor – even the one who used to be a part of the Order once upon a time – wasn’t going to change anything in Harry’s world. Yet, the moment he realized that Snape was still alive, Harry was drawn to him. Not to ask “why”, not to change anything. Just to see the only man who’d been Harry’s greatest error and became his undoing.

“I don’t understand why he was allowed to remain alive,” Harry muttered, remembering the file with Snape’s crimes.

They were three, really: defection to the enemy in the middle of the war, manufacturing a pathogen that left all the muggle-born wizards and witches crippled, and finally, performing a vivisection on a muggle-born member of the Order. Harry, of course, knew all of that already – Snape’s capture and the debriefing regarding the exact circumstances of Hermione’s death was one of the last things Harry remembered before charging with the rest of the Order after Voldemort and his ilk.

“Nobody was executed,” Dawlish said with obvious approval. “A waste of human material… well, formerly human, if you want to be technical. We would rather see them put to good use. Make amends, as much as they’re able to.”

“So you keep them and trade them as commodities.” Harry had a vague inkling that Hermione would have disapproved of that, had she still been around.

“In a manner of speaking. Few are sold, most are contracted out for brief periods of time and return to the centre.”

“Do people actually – er, contract them out them?”

Harry remembered vaguely the story of Jordan signing a contract for Draco Malfoy. He also remembered that didn’t end well.

“You’d be surprised,” Dawlish said. “Lovegood – you know her, of course! – she contracts out Dolohov once a month, for several days each time. I suppose she can’t afford to do so more frequently, and I believe she regrets it.”

Harry winced. He wondered what on earth Luna would be doing with Dolohov, or to Dolohov, more to the point. Somehow it didn’t fit with what he used to know of her. Then again, what the fuck did he know of Lovegood anymore?

“Dolohov was the one who’d set the explosion that destroyed the Quibbler office,” Harry remembered. “Killed her father.”

“Why, yes.”

Dawlish looked almost predatory, and it seemed like he wouldn’t have minded speculating a bit more on Lovegood’s presumed practices, but they came to an abrupt stop in front of one of the cells. Separated by a lattice of metal bars was a small room with a bench, a toilet and a bowl of water. Harry peered inside and winced with distaste, seeing the emaciated body on the bench, stretched out long and thin.

The ‘former human’ was asleep, completely naked and uncovered by anything. There was no pillow, no blanket, no sheets – just a metal bench and the stone walls of the cell.

“Snape!” Dawlish bellowed on top of his lungs and rattled at the metal bars. “UP!”

Snape stirred in his sleep and sat up abruptly, staring around in a disoriented sort of way. His sunken eyes stopped on Harry and something like vague surprise registered on his face. Then, Snape looked away.

“Approach!” Dawlish snapped.

Snape’s hesitation lasted no longer than a moment or two. He lifted himself off the bench and approached the doorway, making slow, painful steps. He stopped a few feet from the metal bars and, without being told, in an obviously learned gesture parted his legs slightly and brought his hands up to clasp them behind the back of his head.

Dawlish flicked his wand and the metal bars moved upwards, providing Harry with an unobstructed view.

Snape really looked … quite thin. Harry couldn’t quite tell whether this unnatural thinness was the result of the incarceration, or not.

Some things, though, were clearly the outcome of the incarceration, or rather, “contracting out”. Snape’s thighs, chest and neck were covered in bruises, all faded to a pale yellow.

“Turn around,” Dawlish ordered.

Snape obeyed without a word. His upper back and shoulders, half-obscured by the long hair, were covered in numerous scars, thick and long, as if caused by whip marks.

Harry glanced down, taking in the sight of him. There were a few more old scars on the lower back and backside, and more bruising too, faded to a faint yellow, but still bearing the form of human handprints.

If the sight should have elicited some measure of sympathy, it failed to do so quite miserably.

“What do you know,” Harry muttered under his breath, “he does get rented out.”

Snape bony shoulders twitched slightly at the sound of his voice, but Snape made no sound.

Harry stared at Snape some more, knowing he should likely walk away and forget the entire thing. He had no use for Snape, not really. He had no questions to ask, no accusations to make that hadn’t been made already three years ago. He doubted he could even work up the energy necessary to hurt Snape – he was just feeling too blank and too numb to pull that off.

“Who usually rents him out?” Harry asked, mostly because he felt the need to say something.

“Some contracts are made for personal reasons,” Dawlish explained, “at other times, he’s contracted out by the St. Mungo’s Department for Countercurse Research. They do a great deal of experimental work, very good work, by the way, and…”

“Right,” Harry cut him off. “I get it.”

Dawlish’s explanation did inspire a spark of long-forgotten rage – at the fact that even now, Snape somehow managed to worm his way into some sort of situation where he’d be doing something human.Snape, helping with research after all he’s done, Harry thought with distaste. What a joke.

“How much?” Harry shocked himself by asking.

The price for contracting Snape out was seventy galleons per night, three nights for two hundred. Harry paid the two hundred, signed the contract, and agreed that he understood that causing irreparable harm or death to the former human will incur additional costs.

Throughout the signing of the contract Snape’s back remained turned to him the entire time. Maybe it was just his imagination, but Harry could swear that Snape’s entire body tensed. He couldn’t help but feel a bit of grim satisfaction at that.

“You needn’t worry about safety,” Dawlish advised Harry, “the new set of charms we have on them prevents them from causing harm to anyone. Even each other. Even themselves. We had to switch things around after the Jordan fiasco…”

Harry nodded, desperately trying to recall the details of the aforementioned fiasco.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Dawlish guessed. “Jordan signed a contract to get Draco Malfoy for a week. Mere four days later, somehow, Malfoy got his hands on Jordan’s wand – even though it shouldn’t have been possible – and fled.”

“Ah yes,” Harry nodded. He recalled that now, including the fact that Malfoy’s crimes included the murder of Lupin and Tonks. The only wonder was that Malfoy didn’t kill Jordan, too. “I understand that Jordan won’t be able to contract out anyone else ever again.”

“Yes. Some say it’s too restrictive, especially seeing how this sort of thing isn’t possible anymore, not with the new set of spells, and yet…”

“Can’t be too careful,” Harry supplied, repeating Reid’s words.

“No,” agreed Dawlish. “We can’t. Very well, Mister Potter. He’s due back Tuesday, unless you choose to extend the contract. You may use the Centre’s Floo to go home.”

Tuesday. So today must be Saturday, Harry thought absently.

The entire transaction left him with a vaguely surreal feeling. Likely because he still remembered the old world, the world where people could be thrown away, forgotten for decades, fed to the Dementors – but were never officially reduced to the status of objects. Then again, Harry thought, if anyone deserved this, Snape surely did.

“Come on,” Harry said. “Follow me.”

Snape looked away once more and did as told.

to be continued
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Vivisection