Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
I know I said at one point that the end of of "No Mouth But Some Serpent's" was the darkest chapter set I would ever write. Um. I lied. Um.
This chapter is very nasty. It is disgusting. It is the reason for the eventual severe gore warning at the beginning of the story. It once again carries a MASSIVE FREAKING CLIFFHANGER. And it is not the end of the darkness. It begins a stretch of painful chapters that don't let up until Chapter 70.
I'll understand if people either want to wait to read it for a few days, or quit reading the story. I mean it. I didn't know how bad it was going to be when I started writing it. This hurts.
With all due warning, now it begins.
Chapter Sixty-One: Crucio, and Worse Than Crucio
Harry was ready when the Portkey deposited him and Karkaroff into the middle of some cool, dark place, obviously far from Hogwarts. He reached out with his wandless magic, ready to snatch Karkaroff's feet from beneath him and roll him over, imprison him in a cage of blue light, and demand that he tell Harry where they were—
And his wandless magic slammed into a barrier a few feet from him and fell back into his body, leaving him stunned and gasping, panting in so much pain that he didn't even notice for a moment that Karkaroff had snatched his wand from him.
"No insolence out of you, now," the wizard said, as he grabbed Harry's arm and dragged him forward. "My lord said that you won't be any problem, and so you won't." He spoke with a gay cheerfulness that Harry now thought was much closer to his true self than the cowering mask he'd presented.
Harry looked wildly around, trying to figure out what was going on. He saw neat grass clipped close, and headstone after headstone. They were in a graveyard. Of course they were. What other stronghold would Voldemort choose?
But Harry was, at the moment, trying frantically to figure out what the fuck kind of barrier was confining his magic.
Perhaps it had only been in the place where they landed. Harry made another frantic bid for freedom, thinking that he wanted Karkaroff's left hand, which gripped his upper arm, to start burning—
And, once again, something threw his magic back into his body, harder this time. Harry doubled over, gasping, and stumbled. Karkaroff grunted at him in annoyance, and then picked him up and gripped him in a hold that Harry couldn't remember having learned, one that afforded him no chance to slip free.
"He's stubborn, my lord," Karkaroff called ahead into the darkness. "Keeps trying to use his magic even when he knows he can't."
Voldemort's voice responded, slick and cold, sharp, the first time that Harry had ever heard his voice in person since first year. "Potter would be like that. Bring him here, Igor."
Karkaroff bore forward. Harry used his eyes on the headstones and monuments they passed—rounded markers, angels, a few rearing blocks carved with words that blurred past too quickly for him to make out—looking in vain for some sign of wards that would explain his weakness.
Then they rounded a final corner, and Karkaroff carried Harry towards a gravestone marked with neatly cut words and half-overgrown with tangled weeds.
Tom Riddle.
Harry began to have a dim idea, then, of what kind of ritual Voldemort had brought him here to do. His stomach revolted, and he managed a few kicks before Karkaroff tightened his grasp so that even that was impossible.
On the ground next to the headstone was a large block of red-black stone that Harry didn't think was native to the graveyard. Beside it crouched a woman whom Harry recognized as Bellatrix Lestrange when she looked up. Her face was distorted with a creeping madness greater than she had ever worn, but she smiled at him gently.
"It won't be long now, baby," she said, and went back to wielding a silver knife awkwardly over something small and furry with her left hand.
Beside her was the chair that Harry knew contained the Dark Lord. Karkaroff dropped to a knee in front of it and held Harry close, twisting his neck so that he was forced to look closely at Voldemort.
Harry's scar burst into fire, a pain so sudden and devastating that he couldn't even cry out.
"Hello, Harry," said Voldemort, and stirred a bit. Harry could see that his skin was red-black, the same color as the stone in front of the grave marker. His arms and legs were thin and wispy, like pieces of seaweed attached to a great fish. His eyes were hungry and staring, as red as the brighter parts of his skin. "So long I've waited," Voldemort whispered. "So long I've waited for this."
Harry managed to roll under the pain of his scar. Lily's techniques for resisting torture ran through his head, in the calm voice his mother had always adopted when she recited them. Don't let the pain break you. Do whatever you can to get used to it and move to another level. Moments when they keep you at the same amount of pain are a blessing, because they allow you to adjust. Don't be afraid to scream.
He managed to say, forcing his jaw slowly open, "Didn't know…that you wanted me…instead of my brother."
Voldemort laughed, and Harry did scream this time as his scar lashed pain down from his forehead through his cheeks and his face, making him feel as though his teeth had turned to embers. Bellatrix laughed, too, rocking back and forth on her knees and clapping her left hand into her hidden right wrist, and Karkaroff gave a deep, rumbling belly chuckle that nearly made him drop Harry. Harry tensed, ready to seize the chance if it happened again, but he didn't think it would.
"Oh, Harry," said Voldemort, his laughter trailing off into squeals like a dying pig. "The time for such pretense is past. I know that you were the one who bounced my curse thirteen years ago and condemned me to a lifetime of suffering. Your lifetime, Harry. And that time is nearly over. The debt is nearly paid." His voice surged with pride and deepened to something more like a hiss than a squeal. "As for why I can hold you so effortlessly…Bella, show him what you have with you."
"Certainly, my lord," said Bellatrix, and then turned and drew a silvery tray resting on the ground beside her forward.
Harry grunted when he saw the objects there, so much did they shock him. He recognized the ring made of ice enchanted not to melt, the triangular piece of ebony, the green stone, the red stone, the crystalline five-pointed stars…
Voldemort had performed a corrupted truce-dance. He was near the middle of it now, from the number of gifts, and that would mean—
Harry's eyes rose and shot over the gravestones to the faint, going gleam of the sun in the distance.
Sunset, on Midsummer Day.
Watch the sun.
Harry could feel his breath rushing fiercely up his throat as he gagged. The pain of his scar was not greater than his fear now, which made his nose ache and his stomach heave with bile.
Voldemort had tied his power to the sun. He must have begun it with the last Midsummer Day, the very day that James took Harry and Connor to the beach to perform the Potter ritual for the first time. So long as it remained sunset, he would have the power to enforce his will, and obviously, he now wanted Harry's magic bound.
Harry wanted to scream as his mind raced back along the line of the year, and certain coincidences that were not coincides at all came forward and hamstrung him.
Regulus had vanished from his mind on the autumnal equinox, at sunset on the autumnal equinox, the very moment when light and darkness ceased to be equal and the power went to the night.
He had come back on the vernal equinox, again at sunset, as the light returned to the world and lessened Voldemort's power.
I am an idiot.
The only thing Harry could not account for was the lack of Voldemort's activity at Midwinter, the darkest part of the year and the one time when he would have even more power than Midsummer. But he suspected that Voldemort might have been lying low, or performing some ritual with effects that Harry wouldn't feel. It was perfectly possible, given how preoccupied he had been with certain other events at the same time.
"Now you understand," Voldemort said, and laughed aloud. Bellatrix joined him again, and Karkaroff, and another figure striding out from behind a tall stone angel. Harry lifted his head and saw Evan Rosier smiling at him, his fingers idly twirling his wand. "Corruption, indeed," said Voldemort, when he was done, "but I have had patience, and I have waited, honoring the cycle of the sun. In this moment, the day of longest light itself will serve my plans. For as long as it is sunset." His voice altered. "Igor, Evan. Tie him to the stone."
Karkaroff nodded and turned around. Rosier was already in front of him, whispering and performing an incantation that made straps sprout from the four corners of the makeshift altar. Karkaroff forced Harry flat, and though he kicked and squirmed and tried to get away, he and Rosier were able to bind him spread-eagle, held firmly enough that there was no chance he could get away.
Harry caught Rosier's eye as he adjusted the strap around his left wrist, and whispered, for the sake of trying to keep his mind off what was coming, "You told us that it was both the moon and the sun we should watch."
Rosier blinked a bit, then smiled and shrugged. "I lied," he said. "I do that, you know."
He turned in a swirl of robes and made his way over to the chair, stooping and lifting the child-Voldemort in his arms. Behind him, Bellatrix stood up, clutching a silvery bowl in front of her. Harry couldn't see what was in it from this angle. Karkaroff was hastening back from a corner of the graveyard, dragging a large cauldron with him
"Hurry," said Voldemort, hissing slightly as Rosier carried him over to the western corner of Harry's stone.
"Here, my lord?" Rosier gently set the childlike form on the ground.
"That will do, Evan. You must take the east," Voldemort snapped. "Hurry! Pass Igor Bella's bowl, and hurry!"
The moment of greatest power won't last long. Harry tensed his limbs and tried to buck his body to the side, but his head was the only part of himself he could move, so tightly did the straps hold him. Once again, his magic roared up within him, but this time, it couldn't even move beyond the outer limits of his skin. They don't have long to bind me, and do—whatever they're going to do with Voldemort. I'll hurt them again as soon as I can.
He used thoughts like that to calm himself as he watched Rosier take up a position to the east of him, Bellatrix to the north—behind his head—and Karkaroff to the south, at his feet.
Karkaroff began the ritual, his voice deep and urgent. "We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers our lord has honored for the past year. By the power of the south and the summer, we offer the bone of the father." He scraped up a handful of white dust and poured it into the cauldron near him, which bubbled and smoked.
Harry stared. Bone of the father…they opened Tom Riddle's grave and removed it? Once again, he had to gag on his own bile.
Rosier spoke, sounding less urgent than Karkaroff, even a bit amused. "We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers our lord has honored for the past year. By the power of the east and the spring, we offer the heritage of the enemy."
He lifted something he'd taken from his robe pocket and blew it forward. Harry's heart constricted when he saw that it was a small boat, its sides made of parchment and its sail constructed of what looked like Slytherin green cloth. The twig holding the sail would be yew, he guessed, symbol of resurrection. The boat drifted along as though carried by an invisible wave, and plunged into the cauldron. More smoke, more bubbles emerged, and then an invisible force like a steel bar lashed across the middle of Harry's chest. He could not have spoken now even if he tried.
He could feel the power rising around him, deep and primeval, twisted Light magic, powerful as the Dark magic at Walpurgis had been. He remembered his father telling him that sunrise and sunset at Midsummer were moments of great power. For a moment, he had to close his eyes.
Bellatrix spoke in an oddly pretty voice, more feminine than anything Harry had ever heard from her. "We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers our lord has honored for the past year. By the power of the north and the winter, we offer the flesh of the servant."
Harry opened his eyes in time to see Karkaroff tip the silver bowl Bellatrix had given him. Slivers of skin, with muscle and flesh still attached, slid down and into the cauldron. Harry shivered as a deep, foul smell filled the graveyard. Did Bellatrix cut those off her own arm? She must have.
Voldemort's voice spoke, filled with the feverish excitement of a child. "We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers I have honored for the past year. By the power of the west and the autumn, I offer the blood of the enemy."
Harry thought he was prepared for anything, but that ended up not including the slight scramble of hands on stone and Voldemort climbing onto his chest. Voldemort stared down at him with gleaming red eyes for a long moment, and then chose his target and opened his mouth. His teeth were jutting things, spikes, barbs.
He bit into Harry's left shoulder, ripping down and hard to the side.
Harry screamed, forcing the sound around the two crushing weights on his lungs. He felt blood pour out of the wound, but what hurt most was the way those barbed teeth grabbed and caught and pinched at his flesh like hooks even as they worked their way out of it. He bucked and shuddered, and Voldemort slid towards the side of his chest, staring at him all the while. Harry's scar began to burn again, and this was the most physical pain he'd ever been in in his life.
"Evan," said Voldemort.
Rosier took a single stride forward, dipped a bowl into Harry's blood, picked up Voldemort with the other hand, and then turned towards the cauldron. Harry lifted his head and forced his eyes to focus through the haze of tears, wanting to see what happened. It might be important later. Maybe there was some way to reverse the ritual.
Rosier ceremoniously poured the blood into the cauldron. Then, not so ceremoniously, he tossed Voldemort in.
Harry stared as the baby-shape vanished. The smoke that immediately boiled free from the cauldron engulfed them all, and Harry had to close his eyes as it stung at them. The pain of his wound immediately sprang back to his attention and throbbed fiercely at him. Almost worse than the agony was the sheer sense of violation. Voldemort had bitten him, torn part of him away, disrupted the integrity of his body. Harry felt faint and sick, and not sure that he could have summoned his wandless magic even if the moment of sunset had passed and he were free.
The smoke soaring from the cauldron rose higher and higher, and Harry stiffened in shock as he heard a thin call breaking from it. It sounded like the wail of a baby, coming closer and closer.
Then the sound was in the graveyard with them, and it was no longer the cry of a baby, but the laughter of a man who just happened to have a high voice.
Harry felt power erupt from the cauldron as though it were a cresting wave, and lap over the headstones. He was shaking, vibrating, under the onrush of it. It was Voldemort's magic, and unless Harry was much mistaken, it was now stronger than it had been when he faced the bastard in first year. Voldemort's laughter rose with it, slick and dark, high and cold, like glass over stone.
Then a shape moved in the smoke, and Voldemort climbed out of the cauldron.
Harry had seen him as he was in the Pensieve memory of that night in Godric's Hollow. He looked much the same now: smooth, pale skin; a flat face without a projecting nose; thin lips; glaring red eyes. His hands patted at his body as Bellatrix rushed forward with a dark green robe to cloak him. Harry watched those spider-like fingers fluttering, and wished he could muster the breath or the strength for a scream of defiance.
"Yes, yes," said Voldemort, softly, as though he were well-satisfied with his body. "This is what I should look like."
He lifted his head, and his eyes locked on Harry's.
Harry felt, helpless to stop it, the curling claws of Legilimency ripping into his mind. He was a practiced Occlumens, but nowhere near as strong as Snape, and his defenses were further lowered by his shock and his pain and his lack of any means to defend himself. Voldemort studied Harry's memories, whatever he was looking at, in great interest. He moved too quickly through his mind for Harry to see more than a flashing glimpse of shapes and colors.
"Interesting, indeed," said Voldemort a moment later, when he had withdrawn from Harry's mind and left him shaking, violated once more. "There will be five Death Eaters not returning to us, then."
"Five, my lord?" Bellatrix looked up at him from where she knelt at his feet, once again moving the silver knife up and down over the small animal. Harry had no heart to try and see what it was. He turned his head as much as he could to watch the sunset bleeding in from the west, cursing, now, the fact that sunset on the Solstice was long and slow.
"Severus," said Voldemort, hissing on that name. "Lucius. Hawthorn. Adalrico. And Peter." He cocked his head to the side, eyes locked on Harry's for a moment. "And Mulciber was betraying me in the moments before he died. It seems that our Mr. Potter here has a talent for convincing my servants. That shall not matter, after this night."
He turned. "Igor, your arm!"
"My lord." Karkaroff stepped forward, baring the Dark Mark on his left forearm. He sank to one knee, bowing his head, as Voldemort touched it.
Harry felt a call whip out from the Mark in the direction of the wider world, passing through the power that sealed the graveyard against Harry's use of his magic—and, he guessed, the appearance of any of his allies, or else they would have been here by now—as if it didn't exist. Voldemort tilted his head back, and whisper-hissed words that Harry could hardly make out.
"My loyal Death Eaters. Loyal to me, to no other, hear and heed the call of your master, and come to me!"
Harry had no doubt that the Death Eaters would be here soon. Voldemort meant to kill him in front of an audience.
If he will only delay until the moment of sunset is past, then I will give him a good fight. Harry was not sure that he could actually win. Voldemort's magic was everywhere around him, and he was reminded, if he had ever forgotten it, that the Dark Lord was stronger than he was. So much raw magic, of a temper entirely different from Harry's own, clawed and fanged and of a quickness that saw exactly what to do to make things hurt most.
Harry lay there, and waited, and hoped against hope that Snape would not try to follow the Dark Mark's call. He would be killed the moment he appeared, or, at best, held for torture later. The same thing would happen to any of his allies. Harry closed his eyes, and hoped, and tried to gather his strength against the aching anguish of the wound on his shoulder.
Someone moved close to him, and Harry opened his eyes, expecting to see Voldemort looming over him. Instead, Rosier crouched there, examining the bond on his left wrist to see how tight it was. Harry waited. He had no idea what to expect, now. Perhaps Rosier would loosen the strap.
He didn't do that, but he did smile at Harry, his dark eyes gleaming like daggers, and he said, "Everything is a game, Mr. Potter."
Harry recognized the phrase from the last letter Rosier had sent, but he didn't see what that had to do with anything. "Yes, you said," he murmured, turning his face aside. Rosier gripped it by the chin and turned it back. Harry jerked away as much as he could, though at the price of knocking his head on the stone and making his wound flare with hungry pain. His skin pimpled with disgust and distaste where the Death Eater had touched him.
Other Death Eaters were Apparating in now, constant sharp cracks making sure that Rosier's voice would not travel far from Harry's ear as he whispered, "You would do well to remember that. Everything is the game, do you understand, Mr. Potter? Every move that someone makes. Every word that he speaks. Every action he seems to take to proclaim his allegiance."
"I am not playing," Harry snapped.
Rosier raised his eyebrows. "Of course you are, Potter. The only ones who are not playing are dead." He winked, and then rose and swirled away from Harry to take his place in the circle forming around the stone.
Harry lifted his head and studied the Death Eaters in their anonymous dark robes and white masks, since he had nothing else better to do. He recognized the shapes of many more men than women, some squat and bulky, most of them more slender and moving with the innate, trained pureblood grace. Harry wrinkled his nose. There were Muggleborns and halfbloods who served Voldemort, of course, but these all seemed to be of the pureblood stock, with their useless prejudices and their memories of life lived to a higher standard that could only be had by actually living it, not following the actions of a monstrous madman.
Harry had not thought he would despise them so much. Perhaps he would not have, had he not, in many respects, been raised pureblood. He knew exactly what they were turning their backs on, what dances and history they claimed to respect and want back. Of course, they didn't want to have to live by those dances themselves, which would have demanded much harder negotiations with a Lord like Voldemort, rather than simply surrendering to his will. They merely wanted the world cleared of people who definitely didn't live by them.
Harry felt scorn coiling like a hot serpent in his belly, and used that to ride out the newest wave of pain from his wound.
In time, the cracks ceased, and the circle of Death Eaters tightened around Voldemort. He stood in silence for a moment, surveying them, and then nodded once.
"I have returned," he said. "Kneel." The word was a command, but, more than that, Harry noticed, an edge of compulsion rode it. He tugged at his bonds, wishing he could be free somehow. Then they might notice that at least one person wasn't kneeling to this Dark Lord who was misusing his power.
Everyone fell to one knee without hesitation, save Karkaroff, who was already kneeling by Voldemort's side. Voldemort smiled at them. Harry shuddered. His teeth were more horrible now than they had been when he crawled onto Harry's chest and bit him, because they appeared to fit more naturally into his mouth.
"I have returned," Voldemort repeated softly, stroking Karkaroff's arm, "because of the loyalty of Bellatrix Lestrange, Evan Rosier, and our very own sleeper, who spent years making the enemy trust him and despise him and think him weak." He clenched his hand down. "Rise, Igor Karkaroff, Headmaster of Durmstrang, Occlumens and Legilimens."
Karkaroff stood. His face had entirely transformed now, Harry saw, and it was relaxed and confident. He stood as though the idea of cowering had never occurred to him. He turned and bowed to Voldemort, his eyes fixing briefly on Harry. Their glance shone with mirth.
"No one has suspected me, my lord," he said. "I can assure you of that. And within Durmstrang even now are a small clutch of fledgling Death Eaters, wanting nothing more than to serve the great Lord of whom they have heard so much." He bowed again, and stood there like that until Voldemort whispered to him.
"Rise."
Karkaroff looked up.
"I am much pleased with you, Igor," said Voldemort, and Karkaroff nodded to him and fell back to join the rest of the circle. Voldemort turned and scanned the circle slowly for a moment, then said, "I am not so pleased with some of the rest of you. Crabbe. Come to me."
One of the heavyset figures gave what looked like a start, and then took a step forward. Voldemort's voice snapped out at once, like breaking ice. "Did I give you permission to walk to me? Crawl."
The figure went down at once, and Harry watched in disgust as Vincent's father crawled forward to the hem of Voldemort's robes. Voldemort let him get that far before he gestured with the long yew wand that Bellatrix or Karkaroff must have handed him when Harry wasn't looking and said, "Crucio."
Crabbe began to writhe and scream under the curse. Harry forced himself to watch as the robe flew back and forth, revealing pale skin underneath it, and as Crabbe's limbs jerked and convulsed. He would be suffering the curse himself in a short time, he thought, and this way at least someone was witness to the suffering of others, as they would be witness to his. It was an odd bond to have with the Death Eaters he despised, but there it was.
Voldemort ended the curse when a line of drool began to run from Crabbe's mouth to the ground, and said, "You thought I would not return, did you not, Vincent? You believed that you were free of the service you once swore your life to. You are not, and never shall be. You will take your son at once from Hogwarts, Vincent, and raise him properly to be a Death Eater and follow me. I intend for him to have the Mark before a year from tonight." For a moment, he turned his head, his eyes gleaming as they fastened on Harry. "And I intend his first victim to be Draco Malfoy."
Harry gave another great heave against his bonds, but it was useless. Rosier had certainly not loosened them. He watched in helplessness as Voldemort sent Crabbe, blubbering protestations of loyalty, back to the circle, and then summoned and tortured a few others who appeared not to have pleased him. All of them broke and cried under the pain. Voldemort gave all of them tasks—mostly trying to recruit other Dark pureblood families—and sent them back into the circle.
Harry memorized the information, and watched the sun.
Voldemort doesn't intend for me to survive, but I will, in spite of him, and then this information will be important.
"And now," said Voldemort, his voice oddly sprightly, "we have a new Death Eater to be initiated. Cynthia Whitecheek, come forward."
Harry blinked as the brown-haired woman he had seen in his vision crawled out from the shadows, more flexible and graceful on all fours than most of the Death Eaters had been. She halted at Voldemort's feet and tilted her head up. Harry could see her crazed eyes fix on his face, and she took a long, deep sniff, as though she appreciated the snake-like scent that hung around him.
"Cynthia Whitecheek," said Voldemort, "werewolf, consort of Fenrir Greyback, do you consent to serve me all the days of your life?"
"I do," said Whitecheek, her voice a growl.
"And do you consent to be loyal to me, putting my goals and not your own first, for as long as you shall live and carry the Dark Mark?" Voldemort held out his wand near her left arm. There was no robe sleeve for the werewolf to push back, since she was naked.
"I do." Whitecheek held up her arm, steadily.
"Do you consent to wear my Mark upon your skin, and take no steps to remove or alter it?" Voldemort's voice was barely a whisper now.
"I do."
Voldemort laughed, and then shouted, "Morsmordre!"
Whitecheek howled as a jet of black light shot from Voldemort's wand and coalesced on her arm, weaving into the snake and skull. Harry watched it form and tried not to care, tried to make his mind float in a distant place from his body, but he knew what happened next, from reading the histories of Voldemort's War, and his panting shook him.
"Your service is sealed in flesh," said Voldemort. "Let it be sealed in blood." He nodded over his shoulder, and Fenrir Greyback appeared, bereft of his mask. By the arm, he pulled a small boy. Harry guessed he was about eight years old, and couldn't tell if he was Muggle or wizard.
Did it matter? They are going to kill a child.
Harry threw himself furiously against his bonds, grunting. They did not give. He reached out relentlessly, again and again, with his magic, testing the barriers, hitting them, and falling back with an effort that made his eyes blur and his head swim.
Voldemort eyed him, and laughed, and Harry's scar burst into enough pain to cloud his vision even further.
Nevertheless, he saw the moment when Greyback released the dazed, sobbing boy, and Whitecheek edged forward, growling, then charged.
The boy tried to run.
Whitecheek was on him in moments, burying his small body beneath her own larger one. Harry watched, because he could do nothing else, and the boy should have at least a witness to his death. He saw yellowed teeth flash and bite down, tearing off the boy's right ear.
The boy screamed, so much pain in that sound, so much hurt that he couldn't understand the reason for. Harry, half-maddened, threw himself against the bonds again. Nothing happened at all.
Whitecheek tilted the boy's head to the side and used her thumb to pop out one of his eyes. She swallowed that, while the child wailed and pleaded, gone beyond coherent words now into one senseless world of agony. Whitecheek wasn't trying to torture him, Harry knew. She had no interest in prolonging the kill. She was eating him, and that was quite bad enough.
Whitecheek rolled the boy over, gripped the skin of his throat in her teeth, and ripped her head sharply to the side. Wail, and scream, and gurgle, and then the sound was drowned in blood, as the boy's jugular split and he died. Whitecheek lowered her head, rubbing her face in the blood, licking at it frantically, as though she didn't want any of it to escape. Then she rolled on her back, bathing her hair in it, and drew one of the boy's arms to her mouth so that she might bite off his fingers.
"Well done," said Voldemort, while Harry panted and felt his gorge and his guilt rise, "my newest disciple."
Whitecheek looked up at him, and then rolled on her back, baring her belly in submission. Voldemort laughed, and gestured for Greyback to cover her with the robe he held. The other werewolf hurried to do so, murmuring in her ear. Then they turned and began feeding on the boy together.
Harry closed his eyes, because he could now, and guilt was eating him like a werewolf of his very own.
He died. He died right in front of you.
And you did nothing.
Harry didn't think it really mattered that his magic was bound. He should have done something. What was the good of having all this power, if he couldn't even use it to save a child?
"And now," said Voldemort, "we have another entertainment planned for you, my loyal servants. A matter of vengeance, too long delayed."
Harry sat on the guilt and lifted his head, fixing his eyes on Voldemort. He's going to duel me. He must. He wants to. And then I'll be free. The sun was still setting, but it could not be very long now before it set completely, and the barriers on Harry's magic would fall.
Bellatrix crept forward to kneel at Voldemort's feet, staring into his face. "May I?" she whispered. "Oh, my lord, may I?"
Voldemort nodded, with a smile, at her. Bellatrix stood up and came towards Harry. Harry braced himself to resist a few Crucios from her wand.
"Oh, and Bella?" Voldemort asked.
Bellatrix turned and looked back at him.
Voldemort smiled, a sharper chop of his mouth than he had shown so far. "Leave him his wand hand."
Dim, crawling horror woke in Harry, as at the approach of a fanged beast, when Bellatrix said, with a simper, "Of course, my lord."
She turned towards him, and in her left hand she carried a knife.
Harry tried to struggle. He might as well have tried to push the world off course. He had to lie there as Bellatrix knelt next to him and held up the blade, admiring it. It shone and sparkled with an edge that Harry suspected must have come from the mysterious incantations that she put into it.
"You took my right hand," she whispered to him. "It seems only right that I should claim a similar price from you. But since my lord wants me to leave you your wand hand, and that is your right one…" She shrugged, and let out a little giggle. "One must make do."
Voldemort moved to stand at the foot of the stone as Harry kept struggling, arching his back and chest up. Voldemort observed him in silence for a moment, amused. Under the direct glare of those red eyes, Harry felt his scar begin to burn again.
Then Voldemort drew his own wand and whispered, "Crucio."
Pain broke out in the middle of Harry's chest and raced up and down. He couldn't convulse to relieve it as Crabbe could, so closely was he held. He could barely tell when it joined with the agony radiating downward from his scar.
He felt the moment when Bellatrix took hold of his left hand and began to cut through his wrist, though, notwithstanding that the tightness of the straps should have numbed his circulation.
He screamed.
Voldemort laughed.
The Crucio burned.
The scar flamed.
Bellatrix cut.
Harry felt himself falling deeper and deeper into the pain. Lily's voice whispered in his head—Don't let it break you, ride it, roll under it, rise above it—but the words no longer mattered. Everything was pain, glowing incandescent red-and-black, rolling like stormclouds above him. Everything hurt, it hurt so much…
He screamed.
Voldemort laughed.
The Crucio burned.
The scar flamed.
Bellatrix cut.
There was a bottom to the pain, and Harry hit it as he felt the bone and flesh begin to part. The knife bore straight down, and carried him to that point. Harry knew that he was not going to be able to do anything to stop it, even as he could not have done anything to stop the eating of the boy by Whitecheek.
His rage boiled, and then dived straight down into him with a scream.
He screamed.
Voldemort laughed.
The Crucio burned.
The scar flamed.
Bellatrix cut.
Harry felt his wrist part with a snapping, snarling sound, and knew his left hand was gone. He knew it, as much as anything, by the sudden increase of his hatred, by the way his wandless magic gathered and rushed towards what seemed like an escape from his body—
And found it only a trap, as it sparked and spun and spat out of control. Harry tried to harness it, reaching for the instinctive command he'd gained of it over the past two years, and it escaped him, running through his grasp like water.
Harry understood a moment later, in a single, despairing breath. He had bound his wandless magic so closely to his body, kept it so fastened to his skin, that a change in the structure of his body, a permanent hole opened like that, made it spill out wildly, untamed, unfathomable. He had lost control of his power, and there seemed to be no getting it back any time soon.
He screamed.
Bellatrix laughed, and Voldemort laughed, and moved away from the stone, lessening the pain from the scar and dismissing the Crucio with a flick of his wrist. Harry turned his head, inch by inch, to see the hand Bellatrix held.
She smiled at him, and then gestured with her knife and whispered something. Harry cried out again as the spell cauterized his wound, preventing the bleeding from killing him and sealing his wrist as a stump.
He hoped that might help him regain control of his magic, but no such luck. It only went on spilling out of him, spitting uselessly, creating small whirlwinds in the grass. Harry tried to tell it to untie his bonds, to strike at Voldemort, to hit and kill Bellatrix.
Nothing happened. The magic did not have to listen to him, so it did not.
Panting, more helpless than he had ever been, with his wrist on fire, Harry stared as Bellatrix whispered to him.
"I've put spells on the knife, baby, incantations I worked months on. You'll never be able to fasten a hand on that ugly stump again. No spell will take, every false hand will fall off, and mediwizardry will just slide off it." Bellatrix laughed aloud, and then held up the hand she'd cut off.
"As for what I'm going to do with this, that's another part of the incantations."
She slid back her sleeve, and Harry saw the ruin of her right hand, where he'd severed her wrist with the Sectumsempra. Other slivers of flesh were gone from it, too, where she'd cut the meat and muscle from her arm for Voldemort's resurrection. She slid Harry's hand down to rest against the arm, and then chanted three sharp words that Harry didn't think were Latin.
His hand squirmed, and melted, and changed shape, and turned in the other direction. It was a right hand that settled against Bellatrix's right wrist and melted into it, until only the different color of her skin let Harry tell where his old hand had begun. Bellatrix smiled at him, and shook her fingers, and took the knife into her right hand.
"A pity I will not get to do anything else with you," she whispered. "My lord wants to duel with you, and will give you back your wand."
Harry turned his head to see Voldemort standing there, Harry's cypress wand in one hand, a smile on his mouth.
"Come, Potter," he said, and broke Harry's bonds with nonverbal severing spells. "We will dance."
Without control of his wandless magic, Harry knew, Voldemort would kill him. He would die here, with so much left unaccomplished, suffering from the pain they caused him, and Voldemort would be free to walk the world again and cause more suffering, especially if Harry really had been the Boy-Who-Lived that the prophecy had chosen.
He would die.
And he would not be able to help anyone anymore.
The diving, screaming pain in him hit the icicle cage in which he'd confined his Dark fury and broke it wide open. Harry felt the emotions spill through him, making his face contort and his right hand—his only hand, now—reach out and catch the wand that Voldemort threw him.
He hated.
Oh, how he hated them.
There would be no one coming to save him this time, Harry knew, no one who would prevent him from unleashing his rage and hatred as he had done against Umbridge and against Lily. No Snape, no Draco to bring him back. He would die here, spending himself in fury and loathing.
And part of him—the part that had screamed at his own uselessness when he lay there watching the boy die under Whitecheek, the part that was sickened by his own folly in not controlling his wandless magic some other way, the part that had opened the cage and let the fury out—was fiercely glad of it.