YourSide, Their Side and the Truth
Part XIX - Eat Me (19.45)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter doesn't belong to me, this is a fan fiction, by a fan for the fans
Author's Notes: This has been a spectacularly hard chapter for me to write. I find it really hard to do dialogue, and when two teenagers are stuck in a cell together, one's blind and one has a love interest on the outside there isn't much they can do but talk. Wail.
"I'm bored."
"No way."
"Yes way."
"I was being sarcastic."
"Couldn't tell."
"Were you being sarcastic?"
"Why, can't you tell?"
"Urgh." Harry slid off the bed with a thump, and Tom immediately sat upright.
"Are you okay?"
Harry rubbed the back of his head and staggered to his feet. "Sure. I'm great." He was still a little unnerved by the way Tom's head turned to his direction even though he couldn't see. "Just indulging in a spot of acrobatics."
Tom chuckled. "You fell off your bed again?"
"Yeah. I'm such an idiot," Harry said ruefully, sitting down on his bed with a thump, only to fall again as the bed collapsed and the mattress sank downwards. Harry fell backwards with a squeal. "This isn't fair! I'd head Azkaban was pure torture but this is bloody ridiculous!"
"What happened?"
"Oh." Harry rubbed his nose violently as he tried to get up. "The end of the bed is a little broken. The boards just fell through and I fell with them."
"Can it be fixed, or-" Tom started.
"I think I can fix it. I just won't be able to bounce on it for a while," Harry joked. Not bouncing on beds was one of the rules actually listed for Azkaban, at least the junior delinquents section. As Harry scrambled over the collapsed bed, he frowned at the size of the Junior section. They must have had a lot of adolescent miscreants at one time to have a section this big, but now, as far as Harry knew, he and Tom were the only occupants who were actually Juniors. Azkaban was full to bursting point now, and Harry wondered what they'd do with any other prisoners captured.
Grunting as he lifted up the mattress, Harry busied himself with jamming the pegs into the end of the bed so that the frame was secure. Pushing the heavy feather mattress to one edge, Harry lifted up the slats for the bed and placed them on. Testing the frame, Harry poked at it dubiously. Satisfied it would hold him and the mattress for another short while at least, Harry heaved the mattress onto the bed frame again and plonked himself down on it looking disgruntled.
"I'm annoyed," Harry clarified for Tom's benefit.
"But I've stopped being bored for a moment," Tom said with a small grin. "I'd forgotten how fun life can be…"
Harry started to dress his bed again, tucking the sheet ends under the mattress neatly. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"I… I guess."
"What… what was it like being… Inhabited… By… By that thing?"
"Uh…" Tom shifted himself backwards until his back was against the headboard. "It was like… Watching televushon."
"Huh?"
Tom laughed. "That muggle thing. The televushon."
"You mean television?" Harry asked. Tom nodded. "Like… being able to watch and not being able to do anything…"
"Not even being able to turn it off, even when he…" Tom swallowed. "Even when he did such hideous things… Just being able to feel it and watch it and not change it at all…"
"You felt what he did?" Harry stopped with a peculiar jerking motion. All the colour seemed to have gone out of his face. Tom nodded. "Even when I… cast the Cruciatus curse on you?" He asked, feeling sick for a dizzying moment.
Tom nodded again, not trusting himself to say anything for a long minute. Finally he coughed a little. "Don't worry about it, Harry. My body wasn't even human at that point, so it wasn't half as painful as it could have been. Plus I kind of remember it using my body and my wand to cast Cruciatus on you one or two times."
The reminder of the Triwizard Tournament made Harry stiffen, and feel glad he hadn't eaten much that day. From the way he was feeling there wouldn't be much of it left very soon.
"Yeah…"
"Didn't you say something about avoiding Cruciatus sometime?"
Harry realised with a small tug of understanding that Tom was changing the subject. They both knew very well the subject of Harry's more recent nightmares, and Harry appreciated Tom trying to delicately change the subject. Even if he wasn't all that subtle about going about it…
"Oh, yeah, I did." Harry shook his pillowcase viciously. "Professor Figg cast it on me when I wasn't paying attention, and, well --" He shrugged. "It didn't affect me."
"How?"
Harry looked at him shrewdly. "Now the Dark Lord has completely left you, right? You're not doing this to trick me out of all my dark and evil secrets and use them to conquer me, are you?"
"Nah," Tom said. "The food in this place'll kill you before I ever get the chance."
Harry sniggered lightly. "Yeah. I believe you with that one. Anyway… There are, really, two major sides to magic. 'Light' magic, and I use that term loosely considering that you can't really label one side good or evil, doesn't usually use backhanded methods to win, and 'Dark' magic does."
"What do you mean?" Tom shrugged ruefully. "I'm afraid I don't really understand it at all. After a point, I think I just… gave up trying."
Harry smiled sadly at Tom even though he knew the other wouldn't see his sympathetic expression. "The Cruciatus curse is really something that is partly magic, partly psychological. The magic part of it I blocked when she cast it on me because I'd recently used the curse, however, the psychological part is what causes most of the damage…" Harry dubiously moved back to rest against the wall, pulling a face as the bed frame creaked ominously again. "When people hear it, they immediately think ouch, this is going to hurt, more pain than I've ever imagined because that is what people have been conditioned to think."
"I see." Tom's voice was thick with comprehension. "My teacher once demonstrated it on a spider… So it was the magical part of the curse that hurt it?"
"Yes," Harry said. "The magic part is usually enough to hit you up to 200 of your normal strength, which is hard enough in its own right. I think the nature of the 'Dark' magic of the curse means that it messes with your emotions to increase the power…" He shrugged. "Tenfold."
"It makes sense. But I would have thought you could label your side light, and their side dark…"
"Why? Because my side is the right side?" Harry choked back a laugh. "No."
"It isn't… but… are you saying they're right, because if they are then you mean--"
"No, no, their side isn't right either," Harry said glibly. "All I'm saying is that we don't have the right to decide. Maybe life was intended to be chaotic rather than ordered. Maybe they are the 'good' side, because 'survival of the fittest' was supposed to be the path of life. I don't believe either side are right, at all."
"What do you think?"
"It doesn't matter what I think," Harry said softly.
"Then what do you believe?"
"In the truth."
"That's a pretty dodgy thing to believe in." Tom said.
"It's the only thing I can believe in." Harry looked up for a moment, desperately. "It's the only thing I have."
"So what is the truth?" Tom asked languidly folding his hands on his lap.
"All the shades of grey between shadow and sunlight."
"Very poetic."
"The truth is poetry. Poetry in motion."
"You've been thinking too much about this," Tom remarked gruffly.
"I was bored," Harry said, snickering lightly. Tom yanked up one of his pillows and threw it at Harry, relying on the other's voice to find his location. The pillow hit Harry in the face and his glasses were knocked askew. "You missed," Harry teased.
"Liar. I heard you glasses get knocked," Tom grunted. "You cheat."
Harry threw the pillow back to Tom. "Yeah, whatever. You're older than me."
Tom glowered. "You know, there's one thing that has really been bothering me about this whole Cruciatus thing--" Tom couldn't see Harry, but he could almost imagine Harry's sudden stilled expression, eyes opened a little wider than usual and skin just a little too pale.
Harry opened his mouth to speak, but was saved by the door clanking open and Balin tramping through; bent over double and holding a large tray.
"Brough' you's some dinner," Balin growled as he put the tray on the floor. "Enjoy yerselves. Oh, there's some letters an' suchlike for yer too."
"Thanks Balin," Harry said politely as Balin managed a grin. He watched as the giant managed to squeeze back out of the door and sighed as the door clanged shut behind him.
"You know," Tom said slowly, as Harry moved off his bed to get the tray, "the wizardry rules for Cruciatus do state that --"
"Oh look, there's a letter here for you from Fleur," Harry broke in quickly, pressing a flurry of parchment into Tom's hands. Tom took them, his head turned to where Harry was but, as always, unseeing.
"Changing the subject on me?" Tom asked quietly, pointedly, but Harry didn't respond. Harry passed over a plate of the sandwiches provided for their lunch, and balanced the tumbler of water on Tom's table where he usually put it.
"There's only one letter for me," Harry said, as if Tom hadn't said anything at all. "It's from Remu-- Ry-- My uncle," Harry finished, feeling pretty strange.
"Hm."
Harry looked across at Tom. The scarred youngster was bent over the parchment, his fingers sliding over the words on the page.
"What?" Harry asked curiously.
"Read your own letter," Tom said, his head still bent over the parchment.
Harry pulled a face, knowing Tom wouldn't be able to see it, and took a bite out of his ham sandwich before unrolling the parchment and beginning to read it.
"Harry,
"Sirius and I will be out of the country for a while, investigating the attacks on Hogwarts and other places, and hopefully stopping them. We believe it has something to do with spectral annihilation, and believe the source to be in India. We actually have some help for our mission, do you remember Fleur Delacour?
"We hope that you're doing okay in there, if you ever need ANYTHING do not hesitate to contact Albus Dumbledore or any of the other Hogwarts professor. (Sirius says 'any professor but Snape' but I'm ignoring him right now since he used my toothbrush without asking first!) If you feel you don't want to get in touch with Dumbledore for whatever reason, my adoptive brother David Lupin is in Germany at the moment, just address the letter to "David Lupin, Germany" and it will get there. I trust him with my life and I know you can too.
"Keep your head up, be aware, and know we're always thinking of you.
"Love,
"R.J. Lupin and S. Black.
"PS. THIS IS SIRIUS DON'T SAY ANYTHING TO SNAPE HE'S A GIT. AND TAKE CARE."
Harry found himself laughing despite himself as he read the postscript, knowing his godfather put that in more to cheer Harry up and piss Remus off than for any other reason.
"They've gone to India," Tom said in disbelief. "India's pretty cool, but the residents aren't very friendly."
"You've been?" Harry glanced at him with a look of unmasked incredulity. "When?"
"Not of my own free will, trust me," Tom said, with a jerk of his shoulders. Harry looked at him sadly for a long moment of silence.
"Ah," Harry said delicately. "Uh, so, what did she say?" A mischievous tone crept into his voice and he couldn't stop grinning. "Any declarations of undying love?"
"Impudent brat," Tom muttered. "She does remark quite often how nice it is to have a friend who doesn't like her for her part-Veela genetics, or her looks…"
"I can vouch for some of that," Harry said with a grunt. "A lot of the boys were all over her at the Triwizard Tournament. When Roger Davies was with her at the ball, he couldn't stop drooling over her."
Tom smothered a laugh. "Well she has a really pretty personality."
"So you are in love with her," Harry said with a grin.
"No," Tom muttered back resentfully.
"Fine. I believe you," Harry said.
"Really?"
"No."
"Brat."
"I try," Harry said candidly. "Well is she in love with you?"
"No! Just leave it all alone. We're friends."
"Oooh, tetchy," Harry teased. "You're just friends. I get it."
"Good." Tom straightened, and it looked as if he was going to say something else but he shut his mouth again with a puzzled frown.
"What?"
"Hm?"
"You were going to say something. What was it?" Harry asked.
"Just… You've been in love… How do… you know what it's like? When did you know you loved Draco?"
Harry started abruptly, his cheeks flushing dully. "I wasn't," he said stiffly. "I don't love him."
"Liar. When you came out of that plagued sleep, you muttered his name."
"Coincidence."
"You've been muttering his name every night in your sleep." Tom shuffled back against the headboard again, clutching his letter from Fleur and trying not to let on he was bluffing.
"I…" Harry fell silent. "I have?"
Tom nodded slowly. "So… when did you realise?"
Harry found himself staring flatly at the wall, his sandwiches half-eaten and forgotten to his side. "In the bookstore, two weeks before we-- I mean, just after Christmas when I found him crying in the toilets."
"Bookstore?" Tom frowned in confusion. "I'm confused."
"Sorry, just got some facts muddled up," Harry said lightly with a quick false smile that Tom couldn't see anyway.
"Right," Tom said slowly, clearly confused and incredulous. 'Something isn't right with this… Something isn't right with this at all…' "Harry, what I was saying before… About the Cruciatus curse…"
"Hey, it's a visiting day. I wonder if another long lost relative will turn up," Harry said, a little too quickly and loudly.
"They don't imprison you for using it on a human…" Tom hissed quickly. A swift rapping on the door made Harry drop his letter and plate to the floor, and they spun with a crash before lying forgotten on the floor as the door opened.
Tom felt Harry move over and grab onto his shoulder, bending close to his ear. "Everything is as it should be," Harry hissed quietly, before letting go and walking out of the cell. The door shut with a small clang and Tom strained to hear, barely making out the sounds of another person leading Harry away and then for a long while, he heard nothing more.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Potter, really I am, but Tom Riddle has been classified as dangerous by the Ministry, and I have a decree signed by Mr. Fudge himself to move you to a more secure and safe cell."
Harry raised his eyebrows mutely and walked along unresisting as Balin led him up the stairs to his new home for a while. He remained silent as Englin fumbled with the keys, and a menacing twelve-foot giant leered at him from behind a pillar. He didn't even speak as he was led into the cell and then left amongst the seven other occupants.
"Welcome to our midst, Harry Potter," Wormtail said with a delighted grin. "Welcome, indeed."