The Highest Tower
Summary:Broken Fairytale series: Rapunzel. Harry was just an orphan trapped in a tower of unfilled prophesies and Draco was just the boy that made him want to run away. D/H, Dark.
Warnings: Dark, mentions of torture and sexual abuse.
The tower had been Voldermort's final curse.
It was an odd and unfamiliar one, even to Harry; who had spent too long in dungeons experiencing Voldermort's wrath. He sometimes thought it must have been done unconsciously of the dark wizard, it seemed too subtle for him and Voldermort was never anything but obvious in his intents.
The tower was just a circle of stone really, stacks of books and cool brick and Harry who barely moved anymore apart from his daily treks from his bed to his workbench and then back again.
Anything he wanted appeared for him, anything he needed was always there, but he wanted and needed little and so the room remained barren and cold, constantly pressed against by the world's realties and the whispering echoes of his unfilled prophesies.
Daylight was always thin and watery through the single window and Harry stared at it from behind his barrier of books, the old dead dust a million small white snowflakes floating around him and he could all but feel the heat of the day against his skin. He felt the prickle of Dumbledore's magic slithering around the small room before he saw him.
"Harry is it time?"
The man was bright and weary looking, framed in shafts of sunlight and his eyes were as always twinkling stars of blue that seemed so, very distant as Harry peered up at him, barely able to face the glare of the sun.
He traced the leather spines of his books thoughtfully and the whispers of prophesies rose and roared in his head. "No not yet" he said softly and wondered if Dumbledore could hear him over the raging echoes of fate.
Dumbledore' star bright eyes didn't diminish and he smiled understandingly at Harry, rummaging in his canary yellow robes and produced another one of those old leather covered, hard backed books he always brought. "Ok my boy" he said, "maybe soon?"
Harry's hand was thin and pale as he reached for the new book, he smiled, squinting against the sun's glare and didn't answer the old wizard. Familiar magic bubbled through the air again and then Dumbledore was gone and Harry was alone in his stone tower once more, watching the tiny particles of dust fluttering around him.
The sun didn't reach him, but he swore he could feel its warmth.
---
His days were shorter than before. Solitude and the ever present whispering made it feel so anyway. He spent the daylight researching, trying to figure out an easy solution to Voldermort's hatred and the nights trying to ignore the feel of Tom's breath against his neck. The dreams had been getting worse since he'd come to the tower, he woke feeling fingerprint highways burning across his shoulders and gagged as his half memories left his ears ringing with the echoing of prophesises and cruel laughter.
Harry pushed aside his breakfast and pulled out the newest leather backed book Dumbledore had given him, ignoring in his fear and his crawling flesh the swirls of dust that moved around him.
His books lined every single wall in clumsy piles of discarded material. Dumbledore brought him a new book everyday and his desk groaned beneath the weight of unread material and the ink splattered sheets of notes that Harry had scrawled. He spent his morning in a flurry of activity and fell into exhausted slumber half way through the day, curled over his desk and pillowing his head against wasted arms and as always plagued by Tom's dream self and the murmurs.
Hermione and Ron didn't visit him much anymore and they never came together. Harry knew he was taking too long, there were no more soft words of patient silences and Ron was a raging pillar of anger and Hermione a crumbling pillar of confusion. But he had no words for them and the roaring in his head was higher and stronger than any tower could hope to be.
Hermione's magic didn't slither or bubble like Dumbledore's, she was a sudden bright pop into his tower and his heart ached as she hurried, sparkling as bright as sunlight through the room. Her eyes were terrible soft and glazed with angry tears as she fussed over him, tucking him into his big, Gryffindor red sheets with a pat that's half motherly and half something else.
His skin was terribly pale and the marks of weariness and dreams were purple bruises pressed deep under his eyes and he was paper thin beneath her hands. "This can't continue Harry, it really can't." She whispered against his hair and he can feel her tears as they spilled and slid over his forehead. He could only clutch at her hand with his flipside comfort and she sobbed as she traced his spider leg fingers.
"We need you Harry" her words are swallowed into his sleep and the whispering roars around him and that, is entirely the problem.
He was broken and unless. Voldermort had kept him for too long, distorting and breaking and remaking everything that Harry was until there was nothing in him but broken pieces and memories. They needed him and he was empty, he had nothing but fear left to give them and fear had never won any wars.
Voldermort was still out there, waiting somewhere outside his tower and they wanted him to go back into the world of blood and pain and destroy him. They needed him to do it and Harry was afraid of their need, afraid of their prophesises. He was unwillingly to die for them and when he'd realised that was what they wanted the tower had appeared, ivory and stone and protection. He needed to find another way and until he did, Tom haunted his dreams and his food was ash in his mouth, but it was better than being out there.
The tower was his prison and his haven; he was half abandoned now in his circle against prophesises and Tom's hands were more alive every night, so he didn't sleep so much and that was why he first saw Draco.
He knew Draco, knew him and dismissed him and the boy was pale moonlight and crushed glass sneers as he gazed up into Harry's tower. "Why are you stuck in that tower?"
"Waiting" Harry replied and the moon was a big shinning backdrop for their scene of hating intimacy. Draco eyes' were liquid metal and he's mocked Harry from the ground and laughed at him without any lost patience or any soft emotion.
"I think you're afraid" he'd laughed and Harry had leant over the stone window ledge, his hair curling around his neck and his protruding collarbones as he'd peered downwards; his face was pale and bruised and weary looking in the twilight.
"Maybe" he'd whispered and the echoes roared in his head.
Draco's mouth twisted up at one corner till his face looked lob-sided and ugly, "you're an idiot"
"Definitely" Harry replied and it was only Draco's laughter that rang into the night.
Tom left bruises on his skin that night; Harry hunched into his pillows and pressed the heels of hands against his ears, trying to ignore the roaring and Tom's glass fingernails as they cut slow painful lines across his hips. "Mine" the whispers had echoed and the tower of prophesises had shimmered and crumbled for a moment.
Dumbledore came again the next day and Harry had accepted his book and stayed silent for his questions, flinching away from the man's hands. Dumbledore's star blue eyes still shone bright and were framed gold in the sunlight. Harry was blinded against its brightest and longed for the moon.
"Still locked up like a princess?" Draco had greeted him that night.
Harry had his elbows on the stone ledge and his head in his palms and had stared down with those big shatter glass eyes into Draco's pale, sneering face.
"Yes" he'd answered and Draco had hissed with dissatisfaction at his complacency.
"If you're a princess where's your prince?"
Harry had furrowed his forehead "I'm the prince as well, of course"
Draco had hummed angrily in the back of his throat and rolled his eyes "a fairy tale made by feminism"
Harry had laughed at that one.
---
Hermione came to visit him again a week later, pressing a packet of sweets in his hands as she popped into his tower. The sugar powder dusted the edges of the white paper and he glanced down slightly bewildered. She sighed and ran a hand through her messy hair, full of nervous, unresolved energy.
"You need to eat more"
Harry smiled at her fondly and placed the bag onto his work desk, hidden in between his notes and his books, "You've been saying that to me since we met" he said softly and rubbed at the smears of ink on his palms. Hermione's gaze was lost and she pressed her lips together till they were bone white against her skin.
"I wish I hadn't now" she said terribly quiet and the whispers roared in his head.
Her fingers stroked at his hair, movements jerky with emotion, "Your hair's getting so long"
Harry could feel Tom's jealousy and hear the prophesises as he responded "Maybe you'll be able to climb it soon"
"Maybe you'll be able to climb down it sooner"
---
Draco didn't come that night and Harry drifted and jerked between consciousnesses fitfully. Tom's hands traced his thin body angrily and left hand shaped bruises on the insides of his thighs and finger burns around his neck.
His books held no appeal for him in the morning and Harry lay listless and weak in his bed watching from beneath his scarlet sheets as the sunlight wavered from his perfect square window in watery columns that hurt his eyes.
The whispers were loud that day.
It rained heavy throughout the night, hard enough that the world was a million distorted fragments through his little window and Harry stretched out across the stone ledge, reaching into the grey sheets until his toes were only barely scraping against the stone floor.
"You're going to fall"
Draco was gleaming with rain, his white face half hidden beneath the sopping tendrils of pale hair
"I don't think so" Harry had answered and laid almost limply against the ledge, his hair sliding wet and slippery down his skin till it disappeared into his collar. "Why are you out there, it's raining?"
Draco smile was brighter than the moon and sharper than razors, "Why are you in there, it's raining?"
Harry frowned and peered into Draco's pale face looking for understanding; he found none and didn't reply.
Draco huffed in disinterest and stared up at the sky, straight into the bullets of water. Harry could see him spinning and twirling in the ribbons of the rain, his clothes stuck and plastered to his lean form and his eyes reflecting the moon. He watched the boy's freedom with something akin to jealously and Tom's voice was a frantic hiss of hatred against his neck, handprint burning ownership across his damp flesh.
"Will you come and join me" Draco asked, his voice moonlight and wind, cutting through the roar of prophesies and Tom's cries. Harry leant further out, wishing he could fall.
"I don't know if I can"
"There's no one stopping you" Draco replied, dripping with mockery and smugness and Harry shivered and leant back into the safety of his tower, the dust swirling around him and the moonlight only visable through the tiny square of his window.
"I know" he'd whispered back and slunk away to be enfolded in Tom's burning arms and the echoes.
Tom laughed against his neck and Harry awoke with his chest torn up and his hands bloody.
-------------
Voldermort had owned Harry for two years.
He had captured him when he was fourteen, his victorious gin pulling at the taunt skin of his face and his teeth like knifes as he held the youth down, Cedric lifeless body just out of reach of his straining fingers. His eyes were like the glass marbles of porcelain dolls and his face was still twisted in cruel surprise.
"Oh Harry," Voldermort had said, his magic like a cloak of glass over the boy. "We're going to have to have so much fun"
Harry hadn't had fun.
The dark lord had cut and sliced and carved until there was nothing left and he was still alive only by magic and willpower and just when Harry thought he would finally die, the man would piece him all back together and his skin still throbbing and tender Tom would grin down at him, painted red by his blood and begin all over again.
Harry screams never stopped and Voldermort's grin never wavered. He made art with the boy's body, broke him and rebuilt him so many times that he was entirely Tom's creation and for that Tom loved him. Hatefully and painfully but enough to keep the child alive, he licked away Harry's tears and washed Harry's hair and then went right back to gutting him.
Harry was half mad and wished he was fully mad when things changed. Voldermort took him off the rack and dressed him up, fitting him in silk and velvet and setting him up like a living doll. His too long, too thin hands burnt highways over Harry's skin and even through the wounds didn't scar anymore, Harry wished for death more.
Voldermort couldn't bear for anyone else to see the youth and locked Harry away in his rooms, keeping him quiet and immobile with magic, tense and exhausted in his apprehension and then he would come back and cut his body and kiss his face and it would begin all over again.
Harry didn't know how he escaped. He had just snapped, he had been so far off the edge that madness stroked like fire at his soul and his mind was half rotted and half broken. He had been sprawled, limp and full of agony and madness before Voldermort and Tom's brilliant obsessed smile had filled his vision.
He had run his blades across Harry's scarred chest and torn his flesh into ribbons, dipping his fingers into the blood and licking at his soaked digits.
"Are we having fun yet?" the man had whispered and Harry had forgotten how to breath, the air was on fire and his body was spasming. He was vaguely aware of his cries and of Voldermort's screams and the heat his magic had created. Then blackness overtook him.
In comparison the tower was a welcome relief.
To be concluded in part two, which should be up in the next couple of days.
This is the first in my Broken Fairytale series. If you have any fairytales that you wish me to murder and mutilate please tell me which. For all those people waiting for the next chapter of Ugly, its half done.
Reviews are wished for.