Warnings: Contains sadistic and cold Harry, a confused and useless Severus, and a Lord Voldemort that rules over Great Britain.

Disclaimer: I own none of this except whatever original stuff I can imbue into it.

Beta'd by Blackumbrage

{} is parseltongue

Stockholm Syndrome: A phenomenon in which a hostage begins to identify with and grow sympathetic to his or her captor.

THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME
by Nenya Entwhistle

Chapter 5
Nightmares are Alive

He broke through.  He felt if it was his actual physical body that was trying to break through, he would have been ripped apart.  His mental self wasn't quite so solid and was able to bend and shift, adapt to the pressure and turmoil that was within Harry's mind.  He'd gotten through, and this time he wasn't in the top layer of Harry's most present memories but he was in the crevice of all that Harry feared. 

It was downright terrifying. 

Please tell him these were nightmares.  Please tell him that these didn't really happen to Harry.  Please tell him that what he was seeing wasn't reality.  It couldn't be.  Could it?  It was far more horrifying than anything else Severus had seen.  He had thought he had seen cruelty.  He had thought he knew a good deal about his Master, enough that he could feel something for Harry.  Speak about Harry as Harry in his head… but was he wrong? 

Ron Weasley.  Severus did not like him, but still… he did not think that Ron deserved what he was seeing.  No one deserved what he was seeing.  No.  If he could feel his physical body, he would have thrown up, hurled his insides out.  But he couldn't.  When he did, he had no doubt he'd be spewing his guts.  It was a wonder he didn't faint.  Why didn't he turn away?  He couldn't…

"Your former best friend," Voldemort stated softly, his crimson eyes gleaming as they did when they thirsted for torture, "my lovely Harry.  You know what to do, do you not?" 

"I do," Harry responded. 

"Then do it." 

The expression on Harry's face was like a stone wall.  Ron was screaming, yelling at Harry to snap out of it--- that he had to fight Voldemort, that he knew that Harry could repel Voldemort's Imperius even if Voldemort was the Dark Lord.  Harry bent down and cupped Ron's face.  The Weasley boy stopped screaming and stared into Harry's dull green eyes.  "Harry?" 

"I am not under Imperius," Harry uttered and then he smiled.  It was a terrible smile as his hands tightened around Ron's jaw, breaking it.  With his fingers he forced Ron's jaw open and reached in to grab Ron's tongue, and he whispered a severing spell that sliced Ron's tongue off.  "You were too noisy." 

Ron's eyes rolled back into his head and his attempt to make noise was a pathetic mewing.  The sounds increased as Harry stepped away from Ron's prone form and sent a powerful: "Crucio!"  Ron's body convulsed with violent seizures as the pain wracked its way throughout his body.  When it seemed that Ron's body would stop seizing in pain, Harry would merely point his wand at Ron and reapply the Cruciatus curse. 

Twice.  Thrice.  Again and again it was applied until Ron's body no longer twitched because Ron was dead.  Ron was dead.  He had died a most horrible way.  Casting Cruciatus to kill someone was an awfully difficult way to die because as a torture device it wasn't meant to kill someone, only to bring such limits of pain as a person's body could stand.  But Ron was dead, quite dead after having the Unforgivable cast one too many times. 

"Well done," Voldemort commented.  "He lasted longer than I thought." 

"Thank you."

Severus couldn't even close his eyes, he had no eyes in which to close.  It was all mental and he couldn't shut his mind off from Harry's unless he wanted to be expelled from Harry's mind and he didn't want that not when he was finally in.  He was not only in, he was very in.   But he didn't want to get out, and as he felt himself being pulled in another direction… he could only hope it was less terrifying. 

Severus stood there while Harry watched him with impassive eyes.  "You want this traitor?" Voldemort inquired. 

Harry nodded.  "I do." 

"Why?" 

Harry surveyed Severus slowly, his eyes moving up and down like he was a mere object of observation.  "Why would I not want the best Potions Master in Britain, my Dark Lord?" 

"I have heard that he has been unkind to you." 

"You listen to rumors, my Lord?" 

Voldemort chuckled, a harsh sound that came out as a faster sort of hissing.  "If you want him, then you may have him." 

"Thank you." 

Severus felt more chilled by having Harry's impassive green eyes on him than the sheer cruelty that was gleaming in Voldemort's.  He was only too glad when Harry's eyes shifted away from him as he and Voldemort left the room.  Severus had wondered then what had occurred and why Harry had left then.  He now understood why.  And he didn't really want to see it but he felt himself pulled to follow them since he was in Harry's memories…

[NC-17 cut out for FF.net read the full version at Glasses Reflect or SnapexHarryML]

Severus was sick.  And he already felt himself being pulled into another nightmare.  These had to be nightmares.  They couldn't be real, but he had the horrible idea that they were very real.  If anything, realizing that they were real was making him even more nauseated and disgusted than he had ever been before.  He would rather torture people than to watch Harry being tortured or Harry torturing people.  It was just wrong… to see Harry in any of those positions. 

Harry was watching Harry.  Well, it wasn't Harry but it looked so eerily like the Golden Boy.  And he was so Golden, wasn't he?  The perfect Gryffindor, laughing and smiling as Hermione whispered some smart comment into his ear.  The Golden Harry and Hermione looked like the perfect Gryffindor couple, just like James and Lily Potter had been except it wasn't Harry.  The real Harry clenched his fist as he growled. "Can't you see?!

"CAN'T YOU FUCKING SEE THAT IT ISN'T ME, HERMIONE?  YOU'RE LIKE A SISTER TO ME, A DAMN SISTER NOT A LOVER, NOT IN ANY SEXUAL CONTEXT AT ALL!  I DON'T LIKE GIRLS LIKE THAT!  I REALIZED AFTER CHO CHANG THAT GIRLS WERE AN UTTER TURN OFF, BUT YOU CAN'T SEE THAT, CAN YOU?  YOU'RE SO SMART, BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT HARRY POTTER'S A FLAMING PONCE, DO YOU, HERMIONE?  YOU'D RATHER JUST ACCEPT SOMEONE THAT ISN'T ME, THAT ISN'T MESSED UP AND SCREWED UP LIKE ME.  You'd rather take a lie…"

The real Harry clawed at the walls that surrounded his perfect prison.  The walls seemed to bend and move as they tried to not hurt Harry, but as he screamed at them to let him out… they did not move away from the 6 wall enclosure that kept him in a boxed isolation.  The walls were sympathetic, but they obeyed only one master… Albus Dumbledore.  The real Harry screamed and ripped his hair out as he tried to hurt himself, but to no avail the walls would not allow him.  He couldn't even kill himself if he wanted to.

When he tried to rip himself apart by his hands, the walls had reached out and wrapped their stony hands around him from injuring himself.  "DAMN YOU DUMBLEDORE!" Harry yelled.  "Damn you to hell, you fucking piece of shit!  You won't even let me feel.  Do you know how hard it is to be locked and not be allowed to feel?!!!!!!!!??  I am going crazy, I'm going insane, but that's what you wanted, isn't it?  You aren't trying to save me, are you, Dumbledore?  You're trying to destroy me!  DESTROY ME!"

All Severus could do was hear, see, and feel Harry's pain, anguish, and turmoil.  Severus had known Dumbledore could be as manipulative as Voldmoert for the sake of good, but to drive Harry to this… insanity was insanity.  Yet, how had Harry turned from being so emotional, this memory reminding him of everything he had known Harry to be to the stoic young man that was Voldemort's lover? 

Harry was sitting on the floor.  He wasn't moving.  He looked perfectly sane and composed.  He didn't look at all like the crazy child he had been earlier.  The walls no longer had to control him to stop him from hurting himself.  He wasn't even moving anymore.  All he did was sit there and stare at the wall, not even bothering to look at the small mirror that showed his doppelganger's activities. 

It was when he turned that Severus saw the dead, utterly dead green eyes. 

Whatever spirit Harry had had, being kept in that room for god knows how long had killed his spirits.  Voldemort must have found him when he'd attacked Hogwarts and crippled the school enough to free Harry from his bondage, but why had Voldemort not killed Harry when he first set eyes on him?  Wasn't Harry Voldemort's greatest enemy?  Hadn't Voldemort spent years trying to wreak vengeance on the boy who nearly killed him? 

Harry was singing, it was a sad, sad sound:

"The walls are falling
They are falling down
The world is breaking
It's breaking all apart
And we are being broken
And we are being destroyed
And we are being killed slowly, so slowly"

"I had heard," Voldemort's voice declared, "that Dumbledore had done something to you, Harry Potter, but I never thought he would do this to his Gryffindor heir.  Who knew that the one that had been playing the Golden Boy so beautifully was a false figurehead?  And he died so heroically.  A suitable death for the Boy Who Lived." 

"The walls are falling
They are falling down
The world is breaking
It is breaking all apart
And we are broken
And we are destroyed
And we are killed slowly, so slowly"

"Even I would have had the mercy to kill you," he remarked, "after torturing you.  Instead, he doesn't let you die.  He keeps you here and tortures you with visions of your doppelganger.  And you had to watch him die while you are denied."  Voldemort reached down and cupped Harry's face.  It had to be painful for the Dark Lord's hand would always cause Harry pain.  "Do you want to die, Harry?" 

Harry looked at his enemy, his greatest enemy with his dead green eyes.  "No." 

{What do you want Harry?}

{I want revenge.}

Severus felt himself being ripped apart as he was being expelled with a vicious force from Harry's mind.  He had no delusion that his superior mental powers were the reason he had seen all he had seen.  No.  Harry had allowed him to look in that far.  But he had gone further than Harry had wanted and now he knew everything that would make the puzzle fit together.  So that was why Harry had joined Voldemort.  It was in the name of vengeance. 

Author's Note: So we're halfway done.  If you think Harry's going to be redeemed, I'm sorry to say he's bad but he has a reason for being as bad as he is.  Chapter 6 and 7 will be released soon.  I'm in finals seasons, so writing will be very sporadic. 

Cat Samwise: TY.
Amaria: Teeheee, ty.
Mikito: TY.
Ashes7: I do try.
Doneril: We'll see about Sirius, maybe.
Shuki-aka Quickjewel: haha interruptions suck.
Selua: Thanks for the review, it was quite helpful for this chapter.
TigerBlak: Shatter is a mild word, I think.
Kateri1: Thanks.
Winnie2: TY.
Chantalmalfoy: yes, Sev is under the Stockholm Syndrome and so is Harry it seems ;).  Triangles.  Triangles.
@_@emily: ty.