Harry Potter In The Witcher [53]

Harry woke up groggily, a dull, throbbing ache radiating from the back of his skull. He blinked a few times, his vision swimming, before his eyes were finally able to focus on the room around him. 

He seemed to be in some sort of… lab. A dungeon laboratory, to be more precise. He had seen a few labs that the sorcerers of this world used before, during his long years of "research," but not this particular one. 

It looked like it was located deep underground, or possibly in some ancient, forgotten catacombs. 

The walls were made of rough-hewn stone in some places, but he could also see large areas where it was just packed, damp dirt. 

Judging by the musty, underground smell, a scent he knew all too well, he was somewhere very, very deep.

Across the dimly lit laboratory, he could see a small, narrow staircase that led up to a heavy, iron-banded wooden door, which seemed to be the only visible exit. 

He looked down at his own body and saw that he was covered in thick, heavy chains. 

They looked to be made of silver, but with a slight, dull bronze tint to them. They were wrapped tightly around all his limbs, his ankles, his wrists, and his torso, with his arms being held up and chained securely to the cold stone wall behind him.

Harry growled softly, a low, dangerous sound in his throat, upon seeing the Dimeritium chains shackling his body. 

Vilgefortz, that arrogant bastard, seemed to have gone completely over the top to make sure he didn't escape. 

And, Harry had to admit, he had done a damn good job of it. Harry knew, from his own extensive, and often painful, experimentation over the years, that Dimeritium, in large enough quantities, could suppress his magic enough to stop him from turning into a dragon. 

He had always dismissed the possibility of it being used against him, though, as he had doubted any sorcerer would ever think to use so much of the rare, expensive metal. 

Vilgefortz must have been thoroughly convinced by the sheer, overwhelming power Harry had shown him in their brief, but intense, battle.

Harry cursed himself for letting his own arrogance, his own overconfidence, blind him enough to let his guard down, to allow someone to sneak up on him like that. 

It's not like he ever truly thought Vilgefortz could actually kill him, but Harry knew better than anyone that there were things out there, things that could be done to a person, that were far, far worse than a simple, clean death.

He heard a metallic clank, and he looked towards the wooden door to see the man of the hour, Vilgefortz himself, enter the lab. 

Harry stopped himself from smirking when he could see that Vilgefortz was, indeed, still missing an arm from their battle, the stump of his shoulder crudely bandaged.

"How are you liking your new accommodations?" Vilgefortz asked, a smug, self-satisfied smile on his face, a smile that Harry would have almost mistaken as pleasant if he were a lesser, more naive man. 

Harry said nothing, refusing to rise to the man's obvious bait. He simply stayed silent, his green eyes cold and watchful as he looked over the man.

"You would never believe that it's already been seven whole months since we last fought, would you?" Vilgefortz said, his voice conversational.

That did catch Harry's attention. Seven months? How in the bloody hells had it already been seven months?

"I can see the shock in your eyes, even if your face doesn't show it," Vilgefortz continued, clearly enjoying himself. "It was quite a strange, and frustrating, experience, I must admit. I tried very, very hard to kill you, you see. Yet nothing I did seemed to work.”

“At first, I tried to suck your life force out, to drain your magic and use it to empower myself, but after weeks and weeks of struggling, I simply could not force it to leave your body. It was as if it were… anchored to you, on a fundamental level.”

“Then, in a fit of pure anger and frustration, I tried to cut off your head, only for it to simply… reattach itself, before my blade had even fully gone through your neck. Over and over and over again, I tried, yet nothing seemed to work.”

“It was then, after much experimentation, that I finally concluded that you had, indeed, somehow learned the secrets of true immortality. And I think," he said, his eyes gleaming with a mad, obsessive light, "that you can probably see where I am going with this, can't you?"

Vilgefortz asked the question, but Harry heard him only distantly. He could only think, with a cold, chilling resolve, about how he was now going to have to make absolutely, positively sure that he killed this man, slowly and painfully, when he finally got free.

"I suppose," Harry said, his voice a low, dangerous drawl, "that this is the part where you ask me how to gain such a remarkable ability for yourself?" He looked at the man with a cool, detached amusement.

"And I suppose," Vilgefortz countered, his smile widening, "that your amused, and rather condescending, response means that you won't be telling me willingly. Which, I'm sure you already know, means that I will simply have to find out the… fun way." Vilgefortz stepped back from Harry and then walked over to a nearby, cluttered workbench. 

He picked up a long, rolled-up leather cloth and brought it over to him. He unrolled it with a flourish, revealing a multitude of sharp, gleaming, and rather nasty-looking surgical and torturer's instruments. 

As a Master Healer, Harry knew the intended use of almost every single one of them. He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"You really think you're actually going to find something, don't you?" Harry told him, his voice laced with a mixture of pity and contempt. 

"You're a complete and utter fool if you didn't think I had made absolutely certain, long, long ago, that no one would ever be able to find out my secrets through such… crude methods."