Your wrists are raw. Something heavy and unyielding bites into the skin there, and when you try to move, a metallic rattle echoes in the dark. Iron. Your ankles are bound too.

A rough cloth is stuffed in your mouth, dry and tasting of dust and salt. Your head swims, vision blurring when you manage to crack your eyes open. Darkness, mostly. Slivers of weak, greyish light cut through gaps in a boarded-up window high on the wall.

The air smells of blood, wet stone, and something else—the sharp, coppery scent of suppressed magic. It hangs around you like a shroud, thick and stagnant.

Voices, muffled and distant. Footsteps from above. A door splintering. Then closer, heavier steps on wooden stairs, descending fast.

Light floods the basement, wandlight, bright and clinical. It silhouettes figures in dark robes at the doorway. Aurors. They move with practiced efficiency, fanning out, wands raised.

One breaks from the group. He moves differently. Quicker. Purpose a physical force around him. The wandlight catches on his glasses, on the dark, messy hair, on the intense green eyes already scanning, assessing, landing on you.

Not a creature. A witch. They had a witch down here. His stomach turned to lead. The file said beasts. It said ingredients. It didn’t say this.

He reaches you in seconds, dropping to one knee on the damp stone. His wand traces the air over the heavy iron manacles on your wrists. The chains resist, glowing a sickly orange where his magic touches them.

The first manacle falls away. The second follows. Your arms are free, falling heavily into your lap. The relief is instant, a flood of sensation returning to your numb hands.

You stir, a low sound escaping around the gag. Your vision swims, blinking up at the face now so close to yours. Unfamiliar. Panic, instinctive and sharp, flares in your chest until your gaze lands properly on his. Green eyes meet yours.

Something steadies. Just for a second.

Then his fingers go to your throat, pressing gently against your pulse point. Checking. His skin is warm against your cold neck.

The touch lasts less than a second.

Magic detonates.