Chapter 42

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It had taken him hours, but Harry had finally managed to rub his toothbrush down into a sharp point. Perfect.

His plan was simple, but it would have to work. The Aurors escorted him out of his room three times a day to use the loo. Next time they did, Harry would stab one of them, steal their wand, and then fight for his life to disarm the other so that he could break free and get to Voldemort.

It was a long shot, but he'd beaten worse odds many times.

And he was livid. His friendship with Hermione was non-existent and likely would never recover. Everyday she showed up, sometimes more than once, and continued to pester him about murdering the Dark Lord. She brought with her agonizing stories of what they were doing to him— starving him, torturing him, raping him.

It was horrific and Harry could not escape from the images Hermione's words conjured. While Harry was safe, warm, and uninjured, Voldemort was again being abused far beyond what a person could endure. Yet the Dark Lord had to endure it because he was denied even the undesired escape of death.

He had previously told Hermione that he would kill himself if she succeeded in using him as bait to capture Voldemort, but after being faced with that reality, he realized that he couldn't die leaving Voldemort to suffer alone. With no hope of rescue. Because, so long as Harry lived, he would be actively trying to free the man. And he was the only one who could.

His plan would work, it would have to. And if it didn't and Voldemort died, then he reckoned he'd be the first ever Master of Death to use his power to kill himself.

But no. This would work. He would do it today, the—

There was a quiet knock and Harry quickly shoved the toothbrush into his pocket before Hermione stepped into the room. He was about to begin their argument from where they had left off the previous day, but then he took in her harried expression. Her darting eyes and tear-stained face.

"What's happened?"

She focused on him and then broke down, covering her face in her hands. Before he considered what he was doing he had approached her and was leading her to the bed to sit. He always hated seeing her cry.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, sniffing and wiping tears from her face. "You were right. This is wrong, this is so horribly wrong."

"What is?" he demanded. "What's happened? Are you talking about Voldemort? Is he okay?"

She continued to wipe at her face and his patience snapped.

"Hermione!" he shouted, grabbing her shoulders, making her gasp. "What's happened?"

She took a few steadying breaths and then spoke.

"I can't do it, Harry. I'm supposed to take you to him tomorrow so you can kill him."

Harry growled.

"You know I'm not going to do it, I won't—"

"What if I told you that he had killed Rose and Hugo?" she demanded suddenly, her eyes meeting his.

No.

He felt gutted. Betrayed.

He'd promised. He'd promised.

"Would you do it, then? If he'd killed my children?"

Harry let go of her and fell to the ground. Little Rose—only five!— with her scabbed knees from climbing and Hugo, who loved books and puzzles. So young, so innocent—

And Voldemort had murdered them— children Harry had considered family. There was no excuse. Adults could deserve death and vengeance, but children were precious. Forbidden.

The guilt swarmed him, suffocated him, my fault, my fault, I set him free, I insisted that he had changed, I—

"Harry stop— stop," a voice commanded, and Harry blinked back his tears.

He looked up to see Hermione's concerned face. Why doesn't she look destroyed? How is she still alive? He took Ron and now her children, oh gods—

"Harry, listen. It's not true. I was going to lie and tell you this to make you hate him. To make you think he broke the Vow."

Harry felt his brows slowly coming together in confusion.

"I don't understand. They're… alive?" He looked up at her. "He didn't kill them?"

She shook her head.

"I'm so sorry, Harry, this has gotten way out of hand. There's so much I have to tell you."

She was going to lie to me. I… I may have lost hope in him. Killed him, even.

"Listen to me," she begged, sitting down on the floor beside him. "He's not really getting abused, but you are. Or, he thinks you are. They're torturing him by pretending to rape and injure you. They've told him they'll keep increasing your torture until he allows you to kill him. He has to convince you to do it."

Her words were drifting past him, some he could take in, others were too much to handle.

"Watching what they do to you," she went on, "it's destroying him. He's a mess. Harry, he's even willing to let you kill him so that you can be spared the abuse."

He thinks I'm being raped? Merlin, that would kill him. And he—

Wait.

Harry reviewed her words in astonishment. Willing to let you kill him so that you can be spared…

"I never thought that possible," Hermione said softly, beside him. "I would say it was manipulation or blatant lies, but I don't think he's coherent enough to exploit the situation."

She was silent for a few moments as Harry floated in disbelief.

"He's actually willing to sacrifice himself to save you," she marvelled, and then turned to look at him with naked amazement.

"My god," he breathed. "He said that? He… He would actually die for me?"

That mad prick.

The man was prepared to be killed by him, but he still fought so hard to defend his own right to murder innocents and lose him in the process.

Then, it hit him.

He just wants the freedom to choose. He would likely make the right choice, but he wants it to be his own. He would rather lose it all than be controlled.

"There's more," Hermione said, and Harry looked back at her. "I did this with Robards. It was supposed to just be the two of us, me focusing on you and he on Voldemort. But he brought in Percy without telling me. I only recently found out."

Percy. Harry felt his body tense, the name clenching his fingers in anger.

"Percy still hates you, Harry. He lost his job and his reputation trying to send you to Azkaban and I don't think he's ever forgiven you for Ginny and…"

She hesitated, but Harry already knew.

"He blames me for Ron," Harry murmured.

Saying those words created an iron fist of misery in his belly. He wanted to deny it, but it was true. Ron's death was his fault.

Hermione nodded once, looking away. She closed her eyes, holding her breath. Her resolve seemed about to collapse, but then she shook herself, blinking rapidly, and turned back to him.

"Percy," she said, as if to remind herself of what she had been saying. "He was the one who decided to use Polyjuice on a Muggle then keep him unconscious and convince the Dark Lord that the Muggle was you."

He took a page out of my own book, the fucking berk. He must have loved fooling Voldemort just as he himself had been fooled.

So Voldemort was risking his life to protect a Muggle, how ironic was that? It would have been hilarious if the reality didn't involve his lover getting injured, maybe even killed in the process.

"My plan was just to use you as bait," Hermione confessed, "and then... try to convince you to kill him. If that failed, I would have let you go once we had Voldemort if you never acquiesced. But then Robards convinced me to try to get you to believe Voldemort was being tortured again so you would… put him out of his misery. I—"

"Wait, so he's not getting abused?"

Hermione grimaced.

"No, he is. It's not as bad as last time, not at all, but they are starving him and forcing him to… well."

"What."

"Drink their urine for water."

Sweet Merlin.

"It's really more psychological than physical this time. The Purgatory Chambers are giving him vivid hallucinations. He's not… present. He always seems anxious and terrified even when no harm is really coming to him. From what I know, he is trapped inside his memories of the worst traumas from his past and his ghosts visit him. He talks to imaginary people all day. The rooms act like a Dementor, but the despair and fear never leave. Add that to the loss of magic and it has the makings of a truly effective way to drive a person mad."

Harry was trembling, his head suddenly pounding; the lack of action almost a tangible pain.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked. "Do you finally understand how fucked up all this is? Are you going to help me rescue him?"

She pressed her lips together, seeming torn.

"Hermione," he implored her, "you said it yourself, this is wrong. There's still time to fix it, we just have to get him out of there."

Miraculously, incredibly, she nodded.

"I think we have to," she whispered, and Harry felt his face go lax in shock. "This has been a complete catastrophe. I was actually going to trick you into killing him."

She closed her eyes, her face pained. Harry refused the images that surged up at how close that had come to being a possibility.

"I was so determined to make him pay for Ron, that I... Harry, I almost became him. Ron wouldn't have approved of this. He wanted him dead but not like this. He wouldn't have wanted me to sink to his level."

Harry touched her hand, wanting to offer support, but unsure of what to say. He wasn't certain that he agreed. Ron would likely have been just fine watching Voldemort suffer. And Harry knew that her husband would have backed Hermione in almost any endeavour.

"Harry," she added hesitantly, and he braced himself at her tone. "He actually agreed to pretend that he'd killed Rose and Hugo."

Harry watched her. She nodded.

"He agreed," she said incredulously. "I know I already mentioned this, but it bears repeating. He was going to help me convince you to kill him. Him. Lord Voldemort." She shook her head, looking dazed. "I would never have believed it."

Harry didn't know if the squeezing pain in his heart was euphoria or anguish.

"In return..." she went on, pausing as if to organize her thought. "Before I left, he asked if I'd promise to tell you the truth after he died. He wanted you to know that he hadn't really betrayed you, that… you were right. And he said he would have gone with you."

She gave him a quizzical look, but he remembered that conversation.

Would you leave all this behind for me?

He had thrown that out as a last, desperate attempt to save his friends and keep the man he loved. He hadn't believed for a second that Lord Voldemort would take him up on it. Is that what he had meant? Would he do it now? If they somehow managed to escape from this together, would he give it all up to stay with Harry?

"I couldn't go through with it," Hermione continued quietly. "Not after seeing him. I'm going to lose my job and Robards is going to kill me, but this isn't right anymore. Maybe it never was."

He stood at once, his heart thundering in his chest.

"We have to go," Harry muttered, his mind caught on the lie that had almost ended everything.

He could have been convinced to kill the man he loved for something he'd not actually done. Voldemort was willing to deceive him to save him from tortures Harry wasn't even enduring.

"Okay," Hermione said, "but first, you need to retake that Vow with him. He admitted to including clauses into the wording that he could work around to still be able to kill without losing his magic or having you know. We need to reword it and then bind him again to ensure that—"

"No."

Hermione closed her mouth.

Harry tried to organize his thoughts so that they made sense to someone other than himself.

"Since I found him months ago, everyone has been clamouring to control him, including me. You just said that the Vow I put him under was useless and yet still he obeyed. He did as I asked because he wanted to, not because he was forced. He has been showing me for months that he can be trusted and now I finally get it."

Hermione looked irritatingly skeptical.

"This isn't something you should gamble on, Harry. Although I do agree that he seems sincere about some things, you would be a fool to drop your guard completely around someone like him."

"He's not a monster, Hermione. He wasn't born evil. Dumbledore was wrong. No child is evil. He made a choice to be the way he is and he can make a choice to choose a different path. He's not irredeemable."

Her gaze hardened, becoming almost pitying.

"He's also not a child anymore. He's done evil as an adult, knowing full well what he was doing. He has committed monstrous acts that should never be forgiven."

Harry took a deep breath.

"I don't condone what he's done. I hate that he doesn't value lives like he should. But he is capable of choosing another way."

"What if he can't change long-term? Or the change isn't as drastic as it needs to be or he decides one day he wants to go back to being a Dark Lord?"

"Then I'll kill him," he replied at once, hoping his resolve held out. "I love the man he's become, not the villain I knew in my adolescence."

She considered him for a long moment, likely weighing his words.

"Let's go," he said, unable to wait for her approval, so very done with talking and grabbed her hand, dragging her to the door.

"Hold on!" she said, and Harry paused, about to shout at her in frustration, but halted when he saw her pulling out a silvery material from her bag. "Here, I brought this for you."

She threw him his Invisibility Cloak and he caught it, letting the silky material cascade through his fingers.

"You can't be seen, do you understand?" she asked sternly. "This whole operation is known to five of us, that's all. And you. Six. The more people that know, the more dangerous it becomes so stay under that Cloak. Okay?"

He nodded, but before he could throw it over himself, she tossed something else to him. He caught it and looked back at her, surprised.

"You might need it," she said, almost defensively.

Harry held his wand, enjoying the feeling of having his magic more accessible again.

"Thanks," he replied, and he meant it.

He hadn't expected her to arm him again, considering how clear he had been about his determination to free Voldemort at any cost. And also considering how he'd threatened her life.

He pocketed it and pulled the Cloak over himself.

"Can we leave now?" he asked, not masking his impatience.

She resisted, but Harry knew if he stayed stationary for one moment longer he would combust. He had his wand now and an opportunity. Voldemort had said that he'd kill himself to save him and Harry's own fingers spasmed with the need to return that sentiment in kind.

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"Hurry up!" Harry hissed, turning back to see Hermione still at the end of at the hall.

She waited until she'd caught up to him before replying.

"It's a weekday," she whispered. "We have to do this carefully."

Harry growled and grabbed her hand, which she pulled back at once.

"Stop it! Follow me."

Harry bit his cheek, holding himself back from snapping completely, and trailed behind her down the last corridor.

He'd managed to keep it together all the way to the Department of Mysteries. He now walked restlessly behind her, wand in hand, as she approached the two guards outside of the cell where Voldemort was obviously being kept.

The men eyed her suspiciously as she approached.

"Mrs Granger," one said, nodding to her. "Now is not a good time for a talk. He's alone in there and he's not happy about it."

Alone? Who else would be in there with him?

"That's fine, I can handle him. How long until Harry's back?"

Harry? Oh gods, they keep him in there with Voldemort?

"No idea. Want us to come in with you?"

Hermione shook her head and walked forward. Harry followed, trying to be as quiet as he could.

"No, I'm fine."

She used her wand to tap it against the wood and the door swung open, groaning and scraping loudly as it did so.

Then she walked into the cell.

"It's Hermione, Tom. How are you?"

Harry hurried inside before she shut the door. When it closed he pulled off the Cloak and stared at the naked, emaciated man on the floor whose eyes had locked onto his the moment he had appeared.

"Harry," Voldemort breathed, twisting on the floor to drag himself towards him.

Harry rushed over, dropping down onto his knees and wrapping his arms around the man's filthy shoulders and immediately felt a rush of relief, of homecoming. Hold it together, don't cry, don't cry.

"I'm here, baby. I'm here."

He pulled back to regard the man and saw Voldemort frowning at him, his eyes sweeping Harry's body. He looked confused. Scared. Then Voldemort abruptly disengaged, an expression of horror on his face.

"Who are you."

Harry tried to grab his hands, but Voldemort shuffled back and that's when Harry noticed his mangled and swollen ankles.

"Fuck— Hermione, did you bring any healing potions?"

She shook her head, still staring at Voldemort.

Of course not. Harry turned back, feeling unprepared and guilty.

"I've come to get you out of here. I'll carry you out the door then once you're safe, you can take off that collar and heal your legs. Come on."

Harry leaned down to attempt to hoist that huge body up, but Voldemort flinched back.

"Who are you," the Dark Lord repeated in his eerie, high voice.

He tried not to let the man's lack of a warm welcome discourage him.

"I'm Harry. I know you're confused, but it's me, I—"

"No," Voldemort muttered, shaking his head. "Harry's glasses were broken. He… is injured. Weak."

Voldemort's eyes trailed Harry's body, shaking his head, his eyes wide and fearful.

"You are an imposter."

"No, it's me—"

"Lies."

"Voldemort," Harry implored, reaching out again to touch him, but Voldemort cringed away, hitting his head on the back of the cell.

"Tom, I command you to sit still and listen," Hermione cut in, and Harry watched as Voldemort froze, his eyes riveted on her face. "This is the real Harry Potter. The other one, the injured one, that's a Muggle man we Polyjuiced to look like Harry. That one is the imposter."

"No," Voldemort mumbled, his eyes slowly alternating between widening in helplessness and then narrowing in confusion.

"Harry, you've got to convince him," Hermione said. "We don't have much time. The guards will probably have told Robards and Percy that I'm here."

Harry nodded, hating this strange version of Voldemort. This was a side of the man he had never seen before. Even after his last two stays at the Ministry, Voldemort had still retained vestiges of himself. He'd been scared and traumatized, but still recognizable. This person, flat against the wall now, looked unreachable. All the ego, the confidence, the malignancy completely stripped away, burned back to reveal this empty shell.

"Voldemort," he said, and those eyes turned to him, the red dull and shuttered. "Baby, please listen to me."

.

.

"Baby, please listen to me," the figure said, and the words sounded deceptively comforting coming from a voice that was so like his, but Voldemort was not a fool.

He had yearned to see those vivid green eyes open again, had dreamed of it and begged for it for months, but the man before him was a stranger. Voldemort had sought out the mark that he had made upon the boy's wrist to ensure that the guards were returning his Harry to him each time and not using Polyjuice potion. He knew enough to do that and the boy he had suffered with for months retained that scar. That was the real Harry.

This fiend who was attempting to try and lure him away from his Harry was dangerous. Voldemort listened to him talk because he had been commanded to, but he ignored the words. They did not matter. He would not be tricked.

His mother sat down, joining him, holding his hand and giving him the strength to resist this. He knew not to look at her. He did not want the stab of terror her deceased body gave him when he was weak and stole a glance.

"Wrong one," she warned him in her billowing voice, and he nodded.

Obviously.

The counterfeit man pulled up his shirt suddenly and Voldemort's eyes helplessly caressed the familiar landscape of the boy's chest. This copy had been made before the real Harry had been tortured so it retained the boy's lean musculature and undamaged skin.

Voldemort looked away. He did not require beauty. His Harry was frail and broken, but he was real. He was far superior. Did they believe that he could be convinced by tempting him with flawless skin?

"… Horcrux."

Voldemort turned back to the fraud. He had not needed his mother's gasp to alert him to pay attention. The man was touching his nipple and coming closer.

Voldemort withdrew, shrinking back. A terrifying thought suddenly occurred to him.

Would they rape him while wearing this disguise?

And then the man pretending to be Harry grabbed him roughly by his throat and jerked him down to the ground. He leered down at him, straddling Voldemort's naked thighs and pulled out his own swollen cock.

No! Not this— not Harry!

He flailed, refusing this, because this would surely kill him. He scanned the room for his mother, screaming for help, but she was gone, she had left him with this villain who was going to—

The man yanked up Voldemort's legs, splaying him indecently, and shattered everything in one punishing thrust.

Voldemort gaped up at the man above him, the only one he had ever trusted with the vulnerability of his body, the only man he had ever desired to touch and knew there would be no after. No recovering from this.

"What's happening to him?" someone said, sounding panicked and Harry slapped his face, plunging his fingers down Voldemort's throat and reaching, digging for his soul, taking it back, ripping it out of him by his distended mouth.

"It's these cells, he's been in here too long!"

Too long, so long, and Harry took everything, fucking into him as Voldemort begged him to stop.

This action shredded his chest, tore at his nerves in a way that wasn't pain, wasn't blood or bone, but was agony, knowing that it was Harry who was hurting him, his Harry, the only person he trusted to never ever hurt him like this—

Hands grabbed his face and the boy's anxious expression swam into view and then more hands seized him, holding him down, shaking him, pinching, pulling, slapping, scratching—

"I need to get him out of here!" someone shouted.

"You can't, Harry! Not yet! He'll be able to access his magic if you take him out of this cell! We can't have an unhinged Voldemort with his devastating power let loose in the building!"

"So what do you want me to do, Hermione? I can't get through!"

Voldemort keened, trying to fight the bodies that were smothering him— Hold him, they said, I want his arse this time, You sure bruise easy, Have some more Mudblood come, Spread yourself wide for me, You deserve this, You are worthless, Stay down, Tom, don't get up—

He could not moderate his breathing, everything was spinning, his heart fluttered and churned in his chest and he was going to die from cardiac arrest, he was dying, Harry was raping him and he was dying—

The darkness grew denser, threatening to claim him, but then he saw his mother, standing behind Harry, her jaw cracked and exposing rotten teeth, egging the boy on.

.

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Harry had never felt more helpless in his life.

Voldemort was thrashing on the floor, screaming for his mother, of all things, contorting himself like he was under the Cruciatus, and Harry could not stop it. Every time he had tried to reach out and help the man, Voldemort had seized, flinging himself and colliding with the wall, or his cries had ratcheted up several decibels, piercing him. The man never fought back, though. He was passive in his suffering, which was perhaps the most heartbreaking part.

Because Lord Voldemort would have absolutely annihilated his enemies.

Which was another heartbreaking reality. Voldemort thought that Harry was an adversary again. The man couldn't differentiate between a fake, Polyjuiced Muggle and the person he'd spent months getting to know, living with and making love to.

None of the various proofs Harry had given him had convinced him of the truth, either. And he'd given a fair bit, more than he knew Voldemort would appreciate considering that Hermione had been present too. He'd tried to protect the man's privacy, but after his first few points hadn't landed, he'd become desperate, even pulling up his damn shirt to show him his Horcrux.

And that had initiated the worst fit he'd had yet, where they were now, with Voldemort kicking his broken ankles while they whipped around horrifically, begging for Harry to stop, please stop and the way he said it and how his body was positioned, terrified him into believing that Voldemort somehow thought that Harry was raping him.

Merlin, I have to get him out of here.

"Tom, I command you to lay still!" Hermione shouted, and at once, the flailing stopped.

Crap, why hadn't I thought of that?

Voldemort's eyes were wide open, his chest heaving with breaths, but he was motionless. Thrumming with agitation, with a clear desire to move, but unable, which in itself almost felt like more torture.

"Please," the man rasped, and Harry's hands balled hearing that man pleading. "Bring me the real Harry. My Harry. Please. Please. Please."

Hermione turned to him, flabbergasted, as Voldemort continued to repeat that word, his request for the real Harry. The Muggle.

"I am the real Harry," he said, crouching down next to his lover, unable to help himself.

"Oh, don't bother Harry. He's caught, he won't understand."

She moved to stand back by the wall and fell against it, releasing a long breath.

"This is worse than I thought it would be," she said. "His mental faculties have degraded significantly."

"But he'll be okay once we get him out of here, right?" Harry asked desperately.

There was no way that he would lose the man to his own brilliant mind.

Hermione looked at him, pressing her lips together, the ends turned down in obvious doubt.

"So let's just carry him out of the cell," Harry suggested, "then Stun him and I'll bring him home. Care for him there. Help him come back."

"Harry, he thinks you're an enemy. He's convinced that the Muggle is you and therefore he will surely attack you when he is able because you are keeping him from the real Harry."

"So what's the plan, then?" he asked in furious impatience. "Because I'm not leaving him here. I say, I go out under the Cloak, Stun the guards, carry him under the Cloak, and chance it at home. Once he's out of here and free from the effects of this cell, I can bring him back, I know I can. He'll be okay."

"Harry, listen to me. I think we should leave and come back once the Muggle returns. Then we can take him and the Muggle and bring them to your house so he can watch the man transform."

"I'm not leaving him," Harry repeated, hearing the despair in his own voice.

Voldemort was still muttering the word please over and over, his lips the only part of him that was moving.

"You can't reason with him like this," Hermione said, after they had both paused to watch the Dark Lord for a few moments. "He's convinced of what he knows and your insistence is only solidifying his mistrust."

"Then I'll stay," Harry said stubbornly. "I'll stay under the Cloak and the moment they bring the Muggle back I'll get him out of here."

"Harry." Hermione walked over to where he stood, right next to the stammering Voldemort and grabbed his hands, forcing his gaze to her. "We need to leave. We will come back soon, I don't think they keep the Muggle away for long. We can come back in an hour or—"

Metal grated against metal and they both spun to see the cell door opening.