Mr. Weasley had almost died after he'd been bitten by Nagini, and he'd been at 's at the time; a fully stocked wizarding hospital. They were out in the middle of Merlin only knew where with nothing around them but trees for miles. Dittany would have healed the punctures but would do nothing for the venom and even if Hermione had brought bezoars or general antidotes with her in her bag it would do nothing. Rationally he knew that, but the rational part of him had left the area the moment Tom's locket had started to burn. Tom was in danger. Tom was dying. And there was nothing he could do about it.
"Tom!" He fell to his knees beside him in the frozen leaf litter, clutching at every inch of him that he could reach. Hands. Arms. Clothes. He was drenched in cold sweat and far paler than he should have been, the flesh around the punctures rapidly turning black. Already aware of the answer, he turned towards Hermione with wild eyes. "Help him!"
She, too, was almost ghost white. Standing with a hand over her face and the invisibility cloak draped over her arm. Tears made her brown eyes sooty and she shook her head, as helpless as he was.
"You can't do anything?" What did screaming do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. So why? Because he needed to vent, somehow, and there was nothing more that he could do. "You can't do anything? Really? Or maybe you just don't want to because of who he might have become! You can't just let him die because of what he might have done!"
"Precious." His voice was dry. Weak. His hand shaking as it lifted off the ground, thin fingers winding in the fabric of the front of his shirt. "Don't. It's not her fault. Don't do this." This was worse than that horrible night in the castle when Ginny had attacked him with fireworks, when he'd stumbled on him lying on the ground and for a split second thought him dead, because this time he really was dying and there was no hospital wing to take him to. The blackness had spread passed his elbow now; spattered with sickly splotches of green and yellow. The afflicted arm lay twitching but otherwise limp against the frozen ground. Tom set his other hand against the raven's cheek, brushing away the tears with his thumb. "You can't burn your bridges. It's just the two of you left. You have to do this alone now."
"Tom, no! You're not dying! You can't!"
"I'm sorry, Precious." The same worn tired tone with which he'd spoken to the massive snake. His dark blue eyes sagged shut, body weighed down with exhaustion. It was starting to become difficult to breathe. "Take care of my Nagini."
"Tom. Tom, no! You have to stay awake!" Harry seized the taller male by the shoulders and shook him with all his might, not caring that he was banging the dark brunet's head against the hard ground as he did so. "You have to stay awake!"
"I'm sorry, Precious." His words were slurred, now. He didn't open his eyes.
"Tom!" What to do? What to do? He had to do something! Couldn't just let the other wizard die! But what?
The moke skin bag that Hagrid had given to him.
The chunk of broken mirror he'd dropped into it and forgotten about.
The eye that he'd seen in it back at Number Four. Bright blue and familiar.
He tore the drawstring bag from around his neck and ripped it open, up ending it and spilling both the mirror shard and the snitch onto the forest floor. Seizing the shard he brought it close to his face. Expecting, hoping, that he'd once more find the eye looking back at him.
An eye was indeed staring back at him but with a surge of panicked disappointment Harry realized that it was his own.
"Help!" Tears had choked off his voice into an almost inaudible wail. Nothing answered him. The image didn't change. "Help! Please! Tom is dying! Please!"
Nothing. The mirror remained just as empty as it had been when he'd first pulled it from the bag. Disgusted and overwhelmed, he threw the shard away and heard it shatter on the ground before slumping forwards over Tom's chest. Sobbing harder than he had since Sirius' death in the Department of Mysteries two years before. Great, wracking sobs which burned his throat and hurt his chest.
He'd lost so many people in his life already that, fair or not, he should have been used to it by now at least to some degree. But losing Tom was losing more than just a person. More than just a friend or the man he loved. It was losing, once again, any chance of a truly happy future.
He sobbed so hard his body shook and his ears began to ring. A high pitched, eerie piping sound which grew steadily louder as minutes passed until the sound of feathered wings could be heard through the trees and he realized it wasn't ringing in his ears at all. He raised his head and looked around, green eyes centering in on the splotch of gold and scarlet racing towards them through the darkness.
"Fawkes!" But how? Had the mirror actually worked? Had his cry for help been heard after all?
The Phoenix let out a joyous cry and soared into the clearing they'd apparated into, landing beside Tom with the quiet rustle of jewel-bright feathers and the clatter of golden claws. He lowered his handsome head, tilting downwards as if to examine the ugly wound in his arm, then blinked and dripped familiar pearlescent tears onto the open flesh.
A thin cloud of silvery smoke rose from the wound, growing thicker with each healing tear that fell from the Phoenix's beady black eyes. The bruised-blackness began a steady retreat back down Tom's arm, withdrawing towards the wound, and then disappeared completely. The punctures sealed up, leaving in their place a shiny silver scar. Fawkes raised his head to meet Tom's eyes.
With a momentary hesitance the dark brunet lifted his formerly wounded arm towards the Phoenix, pausing just short of making contact with the vivid feathers. Fawkes clicked his beak, warbled and leaned his head against his hand. Tom seemed fascinated by the bird, almost unable to believe that Dumbledore's former familiar and the donner of the core of both their wands was allowing him to touch his feathers and after everything, feeling almost entirely wrung out by the roller coaster of emotions the night had been Harry was still able to bring himself to smile.
"Thank you." He said, sounding very much like he truly meant it.
Fawkes nipped at Tom's fingers then turned his head to look at Harry and whistled.
"Thank you, Fawkes." He said.
The Phoenix called again, his musical cry echoing off the trees around them like the ringing of crystal chimes, then spread his wings and lifted off from the frosted ground. His gold and scarlet form soon vanished over the black tops of the naked trees.
"Are you alright?" he asked, still slightly choked up, as Tom shuffled himself into a position somewhat considerable as upright.
"Physically." He still sounded tired and worn down, but now that he wasn't panicking over the looming reality of his partner's death on the frozen forest floor Harry could hear the sadness which laced his voice. Looking very much like a kicked puppy, Tom raised his dark blue eyes to Harry and said "she wasn't my Nagini," before breaking down.
Tom still hadn't quite gotten around to becoming comfortable with displaying his emotions, and this was painfully obvious in the way he forced himself to remain silent and almost completely still but for the slightest hitching of his shoulders as the tears flecked dark lashes and dripped down his cheeks. The sob only broke free when Harry wrapped his arms around him and the dark brunet buried his face in the side of his neck.
He only looked up again with reluctance when Hermione's hesitant footsteps stopped not far away, eyes wet and over bright. She looked incredibly uncomfortable, half guilty, and was struggling to hold up the weight of the snake in her arms as Nagini stretched towards him.
"Master," her tongue flicked out at them. There was worry in his voice. "You smell like death and fire. Why are you crying?"
"Nagini." It was choked. Pained sounding. The snake hissed in alarm and coiled around him and he clutched at her in response. Almost like a frightened child would clutch at his mother after having been lost in a crowd of strangers. Determining it was no doubt better to leave Tom be for a little while and allow him to get it out Harry rose and looked over at Hermione.
"Thank you." She nodded but didn't say anything. "I'm sorry."
Another nod was all the acknowledgement that he received before Hermione said "we should start setting up," and walked away from him. Beginning to weave the by now familiar protective wards around the clearing. Harry joined her, circling the clearing and waving his wand in a myriad of patterns. Voicing the incantations he'd grown so used to, now, that he barely had to focus in order to cast them. Occasionally glancing back at where Tom was still curled up on the ground with Nagini.
After the wards were woven to a passable degree the pair moved on to raising the tent. The sky had begun to lighten as the earliest hours of the morning drew nearer, Hermione stopped him at the door of the tent.
"I'll take first watch," she said. "Just worry about Tom. You should get him inside before he freezes or catches another cold."
Nodding, Harry left Hermione to settle herself on a rock outside of the tent to walk over to where the dark brunet was still sitting. Tom was curled up into a ball with Nagini's emerald coils wrapped around his form, staring despondently out into the dark trees as the snake made a tone-deaf attempt at what sounded like a lullaby.
Harry had felt terrible when he'd lost Hedwig, but as close as he'd been to the owl who'd been his first friend and only link to the magical world that bond had been nothing compared to Tom's bond with Nagini. And he hadn't been the one who'd had to kill her. He couldn't imagine what the other Wizard must have been going through and as much as he wanted to focus on his own relief that Tom had survived he knew that it was more than likely better to give him his space for the time being.
Harry rested a hand on his shoulder and did his best to offer a comforting smile when the dark brunet looked up at him. His eyes were puffy and red-rimmed.
"It's late and cold. Come inside." He said.
"Harry is right, Master." Nagini hissed. "You've come close to dying once already today. We don't want you to catch a cold again."
He continued to stare for a long moment before getting to his feet with a bit of struggle, knocking frost free of his clothes, and began to head towards the tent with a stiff stumbling gate. Harry followed him.
"Are you alright?" he'd already asked that already but asked it again regardless. As Nagini adjusted her position so that she was balanced on his shoulders Tom nodded. No verbal answer. "Are you certain?" Another nod as they both ducked in through the opening of the tent. Another nod as Tom sat down on their bunk and curled up on his side. Instead of going to lay down beside him Harry took up a position on the bunk which had formerly been occupied by Ron and watched him until he fell asleep.
"This is hard for him. Very hard for him." He jumped at the suddenness of Nagini's voice and turned his head to look at her. Amber eyes gleamed in the low light of the tent. "He carries so much weight over what his counterpart had done and fails to understand that just because he once held the same beliefs which drive the monster you fight doesn't mean that he's responsible for what has happened. Or that he should pay recompense for what he might have done."
"I know. And you're right. But I've already done everything I can to help him realize that, Nagini." Harry said. "Tom has to move passed the rest of it himself. No one can make him realize anything until he's willing to let it go."
Nagini hissed again and settled down beside Tom's sleeping form. Silence persisted in the tent for a while before Harry got back to his feet and went to join Hermione at the front of the tent.
"How is he?" she asked.
"Sleeping." He said. "This is all so hard on him. I'm worried about what his mental state might be when all of this is finally over."
"I was wrong about him. I'm sorry."
"I'm not the one that you should be apologizing to." Harry said. "How has watch been?"
"Fine?" Yet she looked uncomfortable. "I just feel like…we're being watched."
Watched? Harry squinted through the darkness in a doomed effort to discern any figures which might have been lurking in the dark trees but as far as he could tell there was nothing there. Even still, now that Hermione had mentioned it, Harry couldn't help but feel it too. "I can take watch the rest of the night, if you want?"
"Are you sure, Harry? I can do it."
"Yeah, I'm sure." He said. "Really, Hermione, it's alright."
The witch made a few more weak protests, more out of politeness than any real desire to stay out there in the cold and Harry continued to insist until she finally gave up and went inside leaving the raven alone in the frigid dark. He still felt those eyes on him but no matter how hard he looked. Harry couldn't make out anything beyond shadows and snow. The feeling persisted until sunrise; at that point all awareness of it faded away into a splitting all too familiar pain.
The house, empty and dark in the strengthening light of early morning. Why hadn't he been called? Nagini had never failed him before. Had never disobeyed him before. Black robes flickering behind him he soared in through the broken window, confronted by the half-incinerated form of his familiar.
Nagini! His companion! His Horcrux! Dead! Fiendfyre, clearly, but how? Potter couldn't have known of such a spell, surely, let alone cast it with enough control not to destroy the house and himself along with it. The Mudblood, perhaps. But Gaunt was more likely.
A surge of renewed anger filled him; he would make his long lost relation pay for what he'd done here. Would hurl Potter's dead body at his feet and watch him break before he killed him. But the use of Fiendfyre meant the little bastard knew! And that meant he had to check the others! The cup in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts and the Diadem at Hogwarts were fine, there was no error margin or loop hole there, but the others…they were potentially vulnerable. Not from Potter, no, there was no way Potter could have stumbled blindly through his protections and gotten out again, but from the insufferable man he knew was the only source from which the brat could have learned such sensitive information.
Dumbledore.
Harry found himself lying on his side when the vision faded, forehead pressed against the frozen ground. As he straightened up and looked around the raven couldn't help but find himself to be quite a bit smug in the knowledge that he'd been given the locations of the last two Horcruxes by Voldemort himself and that the Dark Wizard was unlikely to move them.