Reparo, Pt 1 (PG-13 version) Here is the toned-down version of the beginning of Reparo (which some of you may know as Broken). I will warn you that torture is still dealt with in this, and it could be seriously disturbing. Judge for yourself whether you're willing to read it.

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Reparo, Pt 1: Broken


Hunger... pain... terror...

These three things had ruled Harry Potter's life for nearly three weeks before he finally broke, finally snapped and retreated deep within his own mind.

Harry had been living a happy--no, content was a better word. Harry Potter had been living a content life as a Muggle. His education at Hogwarts had been completed. Voldemort had been defeated. Hermione had disappeared, Dumbledore was dead, and Ron was as good as. Nothing had remained to tie him to the Wizarding World; nothing, until he had suddenly woken up into a nightmare.

Waking up without remembering having gone to sleep was not a regular occurrence for Harry Potter. Nor was waking up with such a headache, unable to figure out where he was. The only other time he could recall was when his Muggle friends had convinced him to join a drinking contest, and he had vowed never to do so again.

The situation became even more odd when Harry realized that he was lying face down; he never slept on his stomach. Ever. He moved to lift his head to see what was going on, and discovered to his surprise that he couldn’t. Nor could he move his arms or legs—there seemed to be something tying him to the bed in the position he was currently in.

“Awake already, Mr. Potter?” a snide voice spoke from above him, and Harry could never forget that voice. “Professor” Snape, Dumbledore’s “trusted” spy to Voldemort. They had never resolved their issues; Harry had chosen not to take Potions and avoided the man as much as he could. But he thought he had left him long behind when he had fled to the Muggle world after defeating Voldemort, so what was Snape doing here?

“Mmph,” was the only response he seemed to be able to make, as his face fit down into the table so that he could breath but not so that he could move his jaw. He tried to lift his head again, and once again met with complete failure.

“Most impressive. Albus was not incorrect—you have a very high tolerance for magic and are able to dissipate it quite quickly. That will make this… more interesting.”

This? What was this? “Mmmph?”

“Ah. Yes. We are in Hogwarts. We will be remaining in Hogwarts. You will *not* be running away. You *will* be taking this potion. Shall we do this the easy way, or the hard way?” The man seemed to be taking some kind of sadistic pleasure in whatever was going on, but Harry was not interested in giving him what he wanted. He remained stonily silent, unable to respond coherently. “I will be releasing the restraints now, and you will move slowly.” Harry counted as the straps were removed—one over the back of his head, one over his neck, three over each of his arms, one across his lower back, one across his upper thighs, and two each across his lower legs. The man was paranoid!

Harry wearily pushed himself up out of the depression in the bed, moving slowly as requested, until he was sitting up with his legs hanging off the edge. There he glared at Snape before quickly glancing around the room. It was small and dank, clearly in the dungeons, and seemed to only consist of the bed and a single door. Larger than his cupboard, but smaller than Dudley’s second bedroom. Finally he looked back to Snape.

The Potions Master was standing nonchalantly between him and the door, holding a steaming vial of some potion that Harry couldn’t identify. He watched Harry looking around, an evil smile playing at the corners of his mouth; the mirth was apparent in his eyes, all at Harry’s expense. When Harry’s eyes settled back on him, he held the potion vial out to Harry.

Harry took the potions vial, and sniffed it cautiously. The odor was foul, as was the source. He was certainly *not* taking any potion from this man, especially not after being tied down and without being told what the potion was intended to do. He began to move as though he was going to drink it, before throwing it with as much force as he could muster at the ground. The glass vial shattered and the potion hissed on the stones as he smirked triumphantly at Snape.

“Ah,” Snape replied, apparently not at all put out. In fact, he looked rather… delighted? “The hard way, I take it. Very well.” His wand appeared in hand and Harry instinctively reached for his before realizing that he had been disarmed—as well as being undressed down to his shorts. Bare feet and no shirt wouldn’t get him far in the dungeons, much less outside in the dead of winter in Scotland. Harry just had time to take this in before his wrists suddenly snapped together and a rope appeared around them and yanked them upward, until he was hanging suspended from the rope by only his wrists.

It only took a few seconds for the pain to sink in—the ropes were digging into his wrists and cutting off circulation to his hands. He yelled in outrage and tried to find the floor with his feet, but he was too high up. “You—you—“

Snape chuckled darkly in amusement. “I did give you a choice, Potter. Now, I think that will keep you quite occupied while I rebrew the potion, don’t you? But I’d rather keep an eye on you as well. Come along.” He twitched his wand and Harry “followed” him, still suspended from above. Harry kicked around several times more furiously, but the rope wouldn’t let him get any swinging momentum, and the movement only caused the rope to tear into his wrists more deeply.

“You can’t do this, Snape! Let me down, now!”

Snape chuckled as Harry stopped moving in the corner of his lab, just far enough away that he couldn’t reach the walls. “I can’t? And why, pray tell, can I not?”

“Because—I haven’t done anything wrong! And this kind of punishment is not allowed! And—Merlin—you’re going to take my hands off!”

Snape sighed and rolled his eyes. “Very well.” He moved his wand slightly and Harry was lowered so that the balls of his feet were just barely touching the ground. Relieved, he immediately put the weight on the balls of his feet, though it took some effort to balance so that he was not putting any weight on his wrists.

While he did that, Snape had already collected ingredients and was brewing the potion. “Fortunately for you,” he commented idly, “this potion only takes fifty minutes to make.”

Harry groaned at that. Already his calves were beginning to burn from having to hold his weight and his balance on the balls of his feet. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded, trying to distract himself from the pain in his wrists and his legs alike. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

“Albus,” Snape replied shortly, adding another ingredient. “Made me promise to bring you back here after you had defeated Him.”

“Why?” he asked again, but now there was a slight bit of hurt in his voice. Why would Dumbledore tell Snape to drag him back here?

“That is for me to know,” Snape answered snidely. “Now shut up, or I will make this even *less* pleasant for you.”

Harry repeated to himself over and over that all he had to do was make it through this torture, a little longer, a little longer still, and take whatever the idiotic potion was, and then he could *leave*. It was harder and harder to remind himself, though, as his wrists were rubbed raw and his calves began to cramp from the effort of taking the weight in their turn.

Without even a word of warning, Snape swished his wand and the rope holding Harry up disappeared. He collapsed in a heap, his legs cramping too badly to hold him up. A moment later, Snape dragged his head up with a fistful of his hair and ordered, “Open.” Harry saw red for a moment before he realized the consequences of his *last* rash action and opened his mouth as requested. He gulped the disgusting potion as quickly as he could.

“What..?” he finally gasped out when it was all down and Snape had released his hair as though it were as greasy as his own.

“Just a little precaution,” Snape replied with a smirk, “in case someone happens to see you down here.”

“What?!” he exclaimed, trying to get his legs under him but stopping when they began cramping painfully. “You—I’m *not* staying here! I have a *life*!”

“I said it before, and I will say it again. You can make this easy, or you can make it hard, but you are staying here.”

“No!” Harry exclaimed again, and this time he made an even stronger effort to get to his feet. He collapsed to the floor shaking, though, when the cramps began in his center and expanded to encompass his whole body. He lasted perhaps thirty seconds before passing out from the pain.

Snape had given Harry three rules to follow: 1) No fighting 2) No magic 3) No speaking

Any violation of these rules was brutally punished. Snape seemed to take a maniacal sort of glee in any opportunity to 'punish' Harry, and he found many such opportunities.

The first time Harry had fought against Snape's instructions, he had been whipped across the backs of his knees. This was far from pleasant, but Harry would soon come to wish that he had continued to be punished that way. Especially considering Snape was a master Legilimens.

After hardly a moment of hesitation, Snape ordered, “On the bed!” When Harry moved slowly climbing to his feet, Snape sneered, “Or would you rather ten more lashes first?” Despite the pain that it caused, that got Harry moving.

When he was flat on his back and feeling incredibly vulnerable once again, Snape began to go about putting the restraints over him, maliciously slowly. Harry flinched badly as the first one snapped closed over his ankle, but managed not to struggle. One, two, three on his leg, and then each was tightened so that he couldn’t move it even an inch. One, two, three on the other leg; the tightness stopped his leg from shaking but he couldn’t relax it. One across his hips, almost painfully tight. One across each of his upper arms, and one across each of his elbows. When Snape pulled the straps tight over his wrists, he nearly screamed with the pain of it, his breath catching in his throat. Then Snape pulled a strap tight over his forehead, and then one over his throat, tight enough that Harry began taking quicker, shallow breaths in panic that he would be unable to get enough air.

“Ahh… There you are, all snug,” Snape smirked. “Tell me, Potter, what is your worst fear? And be honest, now… I’ll find out if you’ve lied.”

Harry’s eyes widened slightly as he realized what Snape meant by “finding out” and snapped his eyes closed before managing an answer. “Dementors,” he gritted out, praying that Snape didn’t have any handy.

“Oh?” Snape replied, his voice a calm mockery of curiosity. “Are you quite certain?”

“Yes,” he answered with as much certainty as he could muster in his nervous voice.

“Then you will not mind opening your eyes so I can be sure.” Harry felt the bed begin to move so that he was more upright than supine. “Open your eyes!” Snape demanded harshly, and Harry snapped them open in obedience. Snape incanted something and suddenly Harry could no longer blink. His eyes immediately began watering painfully, and he turned his eyes as far away from Snape as possible. He would *not* make this any easier.

“Ah. I almost forgot.” Harry refused to look back even as he saw movement out of the corner of his eyes, but a moment later he saw something close to his face and smelt something foul. “Open.” Suddenly refinding his defiance after the last potions disaster (of which he still didn’t know the result), Harry clenched his mouth shut. Snape growled. “I do NOT have time for this.” A sharp blow to his stomach knocked all the breath from Harry’s lungs painfully, and he instinctively opened his mouth wide to gasp for breath. Instead, he got a mouthful of a chunky, disgusting potion, and then his mouth was sealed shut magically. He was going to *suffocate*! He swallowed frantically and tried to get air through his nose, before Snape finally cancelled the spell holding his mouth closed and he gasped for breath, his eyes still held wide open and watering all the more painfully. He coughed as much as he could from his restrained position, trying to get the bit of the potion that he had apparently aspirated away from his lungs.

He waited for pain to follow the potion, or at least something, but felt no effects. Snape gave him two minutes of silence, then ordered in a dangerously soft voice, “Look at me, Potter.” Harry’s eye muscles were getting sore from looking anywhere but directly in front of him, but he refused to look the man in the eyes. “Twenty lashes when we are finished here, and five more for every second that you hesitate!” Snape roared, and after trying to resist for a few more seconds the promise of certain pain made Harry look at Snape.

“Legilimens.”

Darkness. Harry tried to empty his mind but everything was spinning. Memories began to flash past, faster than he could comprehend, of his Muggle life after escaping the wizarding world. Then it was memories of his time in the Wizarding World, with Snape lingering cruelly on those that Harry had forced himself to forget, they were so painful. The worst, however, was the last memory that Snape found, buried deep in his childhood--so deep, in fact, that he did not remember it at all.

It was dark, and cold. He had been locked in the cupboard for almost a week now, and his stomach screamed for food. He hadn’t even been given water in the last day and a half, the Dursleys were gone, the house was deathly silent, and Harry knew suddenly that he was going to die, die in this wretched cupboard, and the walls were closing in on him and he was screaming, clawing at the door, at the walls, desperate to get out, but no one came, and the panic just continued on and on and on...

The memory replayed, again and again and again, until Harry honestly thought he was there and dying, and the suddenly return of the dimly lit dungeon room and the restraints cutting into his tense body were completely foreign to him. He was gasping desperately for air, struggling to no avail, completely panicked.

Snape slapped him across the face and with a gasp he realized that there were no walls to close in on him. His former professor was *grinning* in front of him, darkly, sadisticly, idly rolling his wand back and forth in his hands. “Dementors, you say?” he smirked. “I’ve never seen Dementors do *that* to you. How do you suppose I should punish you for lying to me?”

Harry stared in wide-eyed horror at the man, his breath coming faster just at the thought of being locked in another dark, closed space, left to die. His mind was still spinning, memories and emotions replaying themselves in the back of his mind as he tried desperately to focus, to muster a response.

That memory had spawned Snape's new favorite punishment: the hole. It had probably been a storage cupboard, but Snape had magically adjusted it so that it was not only too small for Harry to either stretch his legs or sit up, but when Harry pressed against the walls in an attempt to escape, they would close in on him until eventually he could no longer move. Snape used this punishment consistently but sparingly, though; there was no point in leaving Harry in there for more than an hour, as he would pass out from terror long before the hour was up.

Snape was trying to break Harry; there was no doubt of it. He fed him one meal a day, and continued to create new, more painful punishments that he could gleefully administer to Harry. Another favorite (of his, not of Harry's) was submerging him repeatedly in tanks of extremely hot and freezing cold water. He would leave Harry under the water until his lungs forced him to inhale the water, then lift him out and perform a spell that would painfully contract his lungs and force all the water out of them. He would repeat this until Harry was voluntarily inhaling the water in hopes that it would get him out faster.

Nor did Snape's 'creativity' stop there...

“I must make an appearance in my main lab today, and you will be coming with me. Therefore…” he waved his wand and Harry flinched instinctively, but his shorts (the only thing he had on him when he woke here) had been painlessly transformed into robes. “This is a temporary transfiguration,” Snape commented, “and it will last eight hours at the longest.” Harry felt any buried hopes of running away deflate inside of him.

“Follow me,” he ordered, and Harry did, down long corridors until he was thoroughly lost. Walking was a painful proposition also, as the salt water from the night before had left the wounds on the backs of his knees more painful than ever.

Harry followed orders closely and carefully in preparing ingredients for many hours before he realized why they were there.

“Severus!” a familiar voice called out from the doorway. He turned and saw Professor McGonagall, now Headmistress of Hogwarts. “Oh, and who are you?”

Harry stared at her in surprise. Didn’t she recognize him? Wasn’t she going to save him? He cringed as Snape’s hand fell on his shoulder, and tensed when the man spoke. “I’m sure you remember me mentioning my cousin, Salazar.”

“Oh yes,” McGonagall replied. “Well, it’s nice to see you, Salazar.. I’m very glad you’re feeling better.”

Harry opened his mouth to plead desperately for her help, but Snape’s hand tightened painfully on his shoulder, reminding him how much of a mistake talking could be. “He’s mute,” Snape said, “he can’t talk. And he’s not very comfortable around new people, as I’m sure you can see.” Indeed, Harry was shaking in fear now, terrified because he knew that Snape knew that he had been ready to speak.

“Very well, Severus. I’m glad you haven’t managed to kill yourself in a Potions accident.” She looked at Harry, and he pleaded with his eyes, but didn’t dare try anything more. She merely smiled sadly and said, “Take care, Salazar.” Then she turned and left the room, and Harry sagged slightly in disappointment.

Snape’s voice suddenly appeared right next to his ear; the man must have leaned down to put his head there. “Let me explain something to you, Potter. You are *mine*. No one will recognize you. No one knows where Harry Potter is, thanks to you. No one will miss you. And you are incapable of escaping. The sooner you accept this, the better it will be for you.”

Harry stepped away from him, shaking now in anger rather than fear. “I am *not* yours, Snape! Someone will miss me, someone will realize that you are mistreating me, or I will escape! You can’t keep me here!” he asserted in a hoarse voice that he could hardly believe belonged to him.

Snape shook his head in a terrible mockery of sadness, delight gleaming in his eyes. “Oh? Perhaps you need a bit more ‘education’ tonight. A few more ‘games.’” Harry backed away a little further, shaking his head. “Get back here, Potter,” Snape suddenly ordered angrily. “You still have ingredients to prepare!”

Harry clenched his fists and tried to make a decision. Part of him wanted desperately to run, but the intelligent part of him knew he had no chance right now, while Snape was around, and he would do better to show himself as submissive so he might be given a chance to escape at some point. He didn’t want to find out what kind of ‘games’ Snape had in mind, but he was going to find out either way. Slowly, he stepped forward to the desk and followed Snape’s barked directions, just as he had done before.

His legs were tired and his stomach was grumbling when Snape finally called an end to the day. He guided Harry back toward the room, and Harry’s breath caught with fear when they entered the room and he caught sight of the wall that held the hole. Snape, however, guided him past that room and into the next room. “On the bed. Face down,” Snape ordered curtly. Harry did as he was told, but wondered what was going on. Surely Snape wasn’t letting him sleep already?

The potions master took his usual deliberate care closing and tightening each strap. Then he did something to the bed and it split, pulling Harry’s arms and legs out so that it was as though he lay spread-eagled on the bed. If he thought he had felt vulnerable before, he felt even more so now.

Snape whispered in Harry’s ear again, “Have you ever cut yourself with a knife, Potter?” Harry felt his stomach drop precipitously. “I think I’ll give you a few permanent reminders of who you belong to—how does that sound?” Then slowly, painfully, he began to cut Harry’s flesh, starting on his neck.

The pain lasted for what seemed hours, though Harry had no idea how long it took. Methodically Snape covered every piece of Harry’s skin with markings, always dragging the knife through Harry’s skin slowly and sometimes stopping to pull the cuts open further, causing Harry nearly to cry out. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached and still gasped in pain several times when Snape cut a particularly sensitive area, like the inside of his thigh or the bottom of his foot.

When Snape had finally finished with his ‘artwork’ he paused for a long moment, then began to take the straps off. Harry didn’t know what Snape had planned, but he hoped desperately that he considered this agony punishment enough.

“Turn over, Potter.” Harry had to bring his legs and arms in to be able to turn, and he hesitated before returning them to their places away from his body. He nearly screamed at the pain when his tender open skin contacted the bed, but confined himself to a pained moan. Then, to his terror, Snape began to close the straps around him again, still holding the bloody knife in his hand. Harry felt his breathing come faster.

“Do you not like this Potter? I thought you wanted to ‘play’ some more—why else were you so defiant?” Harry refused to look at Snape anymore, focusing on the ceiling and trying to think of anything other than the pain as his injuries were pressed into the bed by the tightening straps. Then Snape moved up to right next to him. “You don’t want to watch, Potter?” Then he strapped Harry’s head tightly to the bed before casting a spell that locked his eyes open. “It would be rather hard, wouldn’t it? But I can help.” He cast a reflecting spell on the ceiling, and suddenly Harry had a perfect view of his body, laying out as if captured in the middle of a snow angel. It was as though it was a bizarre mockery of the famous picture by Michelangelo—Harry’s thoughts were interrupted by a flash of the knife.

Snape was wielding it and nearing Harry’s body, and Harry sucked in air in fear. He braced his body for the pain, but wasn’t ready for Snape’s slow movements as he carved an ‘S’ into Harry’s tender skin. Then he moved slightly over and carved another, and then another. Harry couldn’t believe the man’s sadism, and he gritted his teeth at the pain and refused to cry out. Snape stopped after carving an ‘S’ on the inside of Harry’s elbow and stretched it carefully, causing Harry to hiss. Then he continued down Harry’s arm, ending with a relatively deep cut on Harry’s palm which hurt more than any of the others so far.

The potions master continued his ‘work’ in a clockwise fashion around Harry’s body, leaving no area untouched. Harry’s eyes watered both in pain and from being locked open for so long, and through the swimming tears he could see his skin becoming more red than white. He wanted to clench his fists to help to deal with the pain, but Snape had placed one strap over his fingers to hold his hand open. Not that clenching his fists would help when Snape had carved them deeper than anywhere else. Finally, after too long for Harry to comprehend, Snape had covered every area on Harry’s front with the bloody ‘S’s. He began to undo the straps once again.

“Oh dear, you *are* a mess, aren’t you? Well, we’ll just have to clean you off, don’t you think?” Snape smirked, and conjured chains that snapped around Harry’s wrists and lifted him off the bed to follow Snape. Harry had a terrifying sinking feeling that he knew *exactly* what Snape had planned.

Harry had known what Snape had planned--more time in the water tanks, with salt water that burned painfully into the fresh wounds in his skin. Just remembering it caused his breath to catch in his throat as if he were choking on water at the very moment. He didn't have to 'remember' it, however, since Snape made sure to remind him several more times.

Some of the 'punishments' had been more specific to the 'crime.' When Harry had attempted to run when Snape had left him alone in the lab one day, Snape had retaliated by methodically spraining his ankles and forcing Harry to sit all day on a broomstick: a broomstick without a cushioning charm, and one which Harry could not control at all.

As days wore on in this way, Harry became demoralized, but he was not broken. He refused to give in to Snape, even though he could see no way to escape. Finally, one day three weeks in, Harry saw his chance.

He spent every day, all day, in the Potions lab, but now he was sitting on the broomstick with no cushioning charm and was quite sore by the end of the day. His ankles, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be improving at all. He had a the feeling that having them hanging down below the rest of his body was not a good thing, but Snape didn’t seem particularly worried about him healing—if he had, Harry was sure that he would have offered a potion to reduce the noticeable swelling. Instead, he just added a step to their nightly ritual—rotating Harry’s ankles around painfully as Harry’s screams were muffled by the bed.

His mood became lower and lower. Harry was beginning to feel that Snape was correct—he was never going to escape, not at this rate, and no one knew about him or cared. If someone finally *did* think to look for him, why would they think to look at Snape’s cousin Salazar in the dungeons of Hogwarts?

These thoughts, combined with the continued torture each morning and more importantly each evening (each time he was stuffed into the hole, it felt smaller and more terrifying), left him in a perpetual state of wishing that he was dead. Thus it was no surprise that when he was given the task to chop Hellebore and Snape left the room temporarily, he took his chance. He ingested the Hellebore, knowing that it was highly poisonous, then carefully but effectively slit his wrists, taking bizarre pleasure in the fact that he had to cross two of Snape’s ‘designs’ on each arm in order to do so. Soon blood was flowing quickly out of his arms, though, and he was feeling more lightheaded all the time. He was hardly still upright on the broom when Snape re-entered the room and saw what he had done.

The next hour was blurry at best to Harry. Snape immediately closed the wounds on his wrists, then secured him to the lab table when he tried to claw the slits back open. Then he forced him to drink a potion which resulted in him ejecting every content of his stomach (which fortunately only included bile and the Hellebore). Once Harry was done vomiting, he was forced to drink another potion, which finally brought the world back into focus, much to his dismay.

“What did I tell you about fighting, Potter? Didn’t I warn you that you belong to me, and there will be no escape?” Snape ranted. Harry glared murderously in his general direction from his position still stuck to the lab table. Snape’s voice lowered dangerously. “So, you thought you would take away my fun and attempt to obliterate any signs of my ownership at the same time, did you? Well, that can be remedied.”

Only this evil Snape could possibly call his response a 'remedy.' Snape had carefully recarved each of the 'S'-shaped wounds, and each time he immediately poured a potion that burned deep into the wound. When he turned Harry over to continue, he also informed him that the potion would heal the wounds but leave a permanent scar--one that could not even be removed by magic.

But that was not the worst of it. Snape knew somehow how to find the very center of Harry's being and break him from the inside out.

Finally Snape completed his sickening task, and Harry stared in horror as Snape stepped back and he saw only his body, covered with bright red “S” shapes that were already scarring with a burning pain. Then Snape raised the bed up and stared into Harry’s eyes, which were still locked open. “Legilimens,” he spoke, and then the memories were spinning through his mind.

Harry fought the intrusion with all that he had, but Snape hammered painfully through every defense, aiming straight for one memory—his ‘favorite’ memory. When he reached it, he played it over and over, and Harry was back in the cupboard, trapped and terrified, his claustrophobia overwhelming him. Then, after more iterations than Harry could count, he realized that he was no longer being forced to relive the memory. Snape was swimming in front of his teary eyes, and speaking again. “Legilimens.” Once again Snape had to start at the most recent memories and batter through until he reached the one he wanted, and began to repeat it again, and again, and again, until that was all Harry knew. And then Snape was out of his mind, and then he was battering back in, and again, and again, until the only thing that Harry could do was bring the memory to the front of his mind, offering it to the man so that he would not have to suffer the agony of having his mind torn apart anymore.

Then, though, the Legilimens was battering through, searching for another memory, a memory of complete panic in the hole, of it closing on him until he could no longer move and all he could do was scream. He repeated the process, over and over, until all Harry could see was the dark hole, and then he began to alternate rapidly—he was reliving the cupboard, and then the hole, and then the cupboard, and then the hole, and then the cupboard, the hole, the cupboard, the hole, the hole, the hole—he snapped out of the memories only to see pitch blackness. He felt out with his hands and realized to his terror that he was *in* the hole. He tried to fight back against the Legilimency, but there was no one else in his head, and this was real, too real. He pushed desperately at the walls, clawed at them, screamed desperately in panic, and wished for oblivion. He closed his eyes, willing himself to pass out in panic as he always had before, but it unconsciousness was not coming.

As the walls closed in on him tighter and tighter and his breath came faster, Harry suddenly realized that this was it—his life, hunger, pain, and terror, forever. He was never going to escape; Snape was never going to stop. Harry felt something inside him stretching thinner and thinner with the panic, until finally, it snapped—the tenuous thread that had been holding him to his sanity was gone.

Harry Potter was broken.

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