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Don't Trust Your Thoughts
(Don't Rest Your Head crossover)
Migraine was pulsing in synch with his heartbeat. Piercing pain set his scar aflame, then receded to a dull headache, slowly growing in intensity back. Wave after wave after wave, never stopping, never going away, never letting him forget, always there, punctuating every second of his life.
Harry took to sleeping in his cupboard again. It was his home for all of his childhood, and now, with his nerves burning, it was the only place he could get some rest, where noises of a sleeping house didn't cause his skin to crawl with terror.
Recently, however, he couldn't find peace even there.
In a dim light of a small lamp he borrowed, he read and reread Hermione's letter, and with each wave of migraine unwritten words bled onto paper, detailing Voldemort's campaign of terror, the fall of the Ministry, death of his friends. He knew it wasn't true. He knew it was a hallucination born from insomnia and his own fears. He couldn't stop reading.
In a corner of his eye he saw a shadow creeping towards him, and at some level he knew that if he did nothing, if he allowed the shadow to grow, it would consume him.
He put the letter on the floor and breathed deeply. He couldn't go on like that.
He couldn't get any sleep, same as the last three days, so he settled on getting some fresh air.
Stepping carefully around creaking floorboards, knowing each of them by now, he slipped out from the house. The night air took away the edge from his migraine, though, of course, it was still there, and once he adjusted to the change, he knew, it would be back in full force.
He wandered the streets aimlessly, trying not to think, trying to ride the waves of pain. He knew it was possible, sometimes he could almost achieve it, allowing the pain wash over him, allowing his thoughts to be shaped by its rhythm.
His efforts were forgotten when he walked into an alley he couldn't remember and found himself on an edge of a cliff observing an impossible sprawling city under the red skies cracked in half, the full moon gazing from the crack upon the world below like an eye of a great beast.
For a few moments he just stood there, not comprehending what he was seeing. It couldn't be real. It must be another hallucination, another symptom of his deteriorating mind.
A shadow moved on an edge of his vision, and when he turned to look, his face was suddenly full of paper. He struggled against it, fighting for air, and managed to drag it away.
It was a newspaper. He giggled at that revelation, but his breath was cut short when he noticed a headline.
"VOLDEMORT STRIKES AGAIN"
Under it in cursive was written, "All of your friends are dead, Harry. Their ghosts write you letters."
He dropped the newspaper. It couldn't be real. He must have gone mad.
The rate of migraine increased with the rate of his heartbeat.
He didn't want to deal with it.
He didn't want to think.
He didn't want to be.
His thoughts vanished, thoughts born of pain took their place, and the flesh followed, his skin growing thin and dry like parchment, his features melting into a new yet very familiar form, his eyes rolled in their sockets, devoured by something within him and spat out different. His mind convulsed for the last time, and the pain was gone.
Voldemort stood on the edge of a cliff, observing what was to be his new domain. Before that, however, there were other things warranting his attention.
His gaze fell on the newspaper, and he smiled.
AN: Harry's Madness Talent is to turn into Voldemort. The thing with newspaper is an attac Paper Boy who could define your future. Technically, it can be avoided, but it's not easy.