A/N: Chapter Warnings for; explicit language, the aftermath of torture, torture and abuse (discussed), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depictions of injuries.
Since this is an Interlude, we will be updating chapter eighteen NEXT Saturday instead of the normal scheduled date. Have fun with it and stay safe
Next update on 17th October, Saturday.
Interlude
He has a headache.
It's funny how only now does he notice the pounding in his head, not for its lack of presence before, but rather because of the absence of much more pointed sources of pain. That's the one perk of torture.
It's irritating.
Harry isn't used to being frustrated by headaches. Not normal ones anyway, if it didn't have anything to do with his scar, then it wasn't worth thinking about, and his body, ever the victim of Harry's whims and bouts of bravery, had merely given up in its pursuit to convince him otherwise.
Now it's taking revenge.
He's not allowed to take nerve soothers with any other potions. He remembers that much, so this headache is going to stay unless Harry sleeps it off.
Harry isn't going to do that. For obvious reasons.
His knees are also on the list of things that hurt, but that's self-inflicted because he's an idiot, and he's kneeling on the cold hard floor by the couch. It's the only way he can keep watch on Draco without collapsing in exhaustion.
'Lying down would help, you know,'
"Piss off," Harry mutters, leaning his head against the edge of the couch. He can smell stale blood, still on Draco's shirt, it's enforcing his nausea but he finds it comforting. It's familiar. It reminds him of Hogwarts, and the girls bathroom, an entire lifetime ago.
'Looks better than that shitty cell, at least.' he hears Sirius' boots clicking around the living room. 'You should walk around a bit, just to make sure you still can,'
"Shut up,"
'Or to make sure this is real. Two distinct possibilities, right? Either you're here or you're not.' Sirius is behind him, Harry can feel the man sprawled on an armchair.
"Real?" Harry's fingers attempt rubbing his temple, his aim is off and the shaking gets his hand tangled in his hair. Harry curses.
The idea of this being real, or rather, the falseness grips him. It would imply that Harry is stuck in a delusional world where Snape and Draco saved his ass, and now they're here in a cottage with fucking shells everywhere while really being back in the cell getting his brain fried. Either that, or that this is real.
Harry hates Sirius for even suggesting the mere possibility, because any shred of relief that was slowly soaking down into his bones, is now dried into a brittle sense of dread.
Is anything real anymore?
Even Sirius isn't real. And that means he himself thinks that this all might not be real, and he really does not have the time to be taking this type of shit from his own self.
He raises his hand with slight difficulty and drags it across the couch until he feels skin. Draco is still a bit hot, but not hot enough for Harry to give him any potions per Snape's instructions.
That feels real enough.
'Do you think you would know?' Sirius drawls. 'The difference between living and the afterlife. I feel like this could be the continuation of a less than peaceful death for you,'
The real Sirius would never say such a thing to Harry, and if anything, that's evidence enough that Harry isn't dead or dreaming of death. Imaginary Sirius doesn't have the license to be a twat to him once he's already dead. That's not how the game is played.
Death is potentially the ideal ending to 'had everything gone right,' after all.
'This is your ideal ending?' he can feel the man gesturing around the darkened living room. 'You can do better than this, kiddo. Death matters almost as much as the entire thing itself,'
Out of all of the horrible things that had happened to him, these words are what finally breaks the dam. Harry starts crying, not with much gusto, he doesn't have the energy to support the amount of weight he needs off his chest, so the tears stream down and half formed sobs back them up and that's all he can do.
Sirius doesn't try to comfort him and Harry keeps crying, with no clock ticking away in the background and his head pounding.
He cannot even die right.
Ridiculous thought to be crying about, considering that he's not dead in the first place but Harry clings onto it like a drowning man to a rock. He needs this momentum to help him cry.
Abnormal in every way, it's ironic. He tries so hard, each day, everyday, to be a little less like...himself. the skewered Harry Potter gene. The corrupted part of him. And he can't even do this one thing that everyone can do, he has to be crazy in this too.
This wouldn't improve his headache.
He doesn't know for how long, but the pathetic, exhausted crying-whimpering goes on for a while, and the cycle is only broken by a sound that's louder than his barely audible voice.
It's a crack.
Harry stops mid-sob, almost comical in its abruptness, his eyes widen and only Draco's raspy breaths fill the overwhelming silence that remains.
'You didn't imagine that,' Sirius says, he's standing and Harry quickly scrambles to his feet as well, shaking all over. He's not used to it, it's throwing off his balance. He fucking hates it.
His eyes are trained on Draco, but his ears are strained for any voice coming from outside aside from the howling wind.
It could be Snape, he thinks as he grapples for the wand on the floor as quietly as he can, holding it in a clenched fist as he slowly backs towards the kitchen.
'It could be a death eater,' Sirius counters, and Harry has the urge to shush him.
The wand shakes in his grip, threatening to unleash a new wave of tears and frustration. He wouldn't be able to use his wand the right way, he doesn't even need to cast any spells to know that.
Harry drops his wand on the coffee table with a muted curse. His chest is so tight that his lungs might just pop like a balloon any second.
He cannot take any risks. It is either Snape or it is not Snape and if it is not Snape then it is a threat. He needs a weapon. One he can actually use. The cottage is a new and unfamiliar place, and he doesn't know where things are, what he can use as weapons. He looks around blindly, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Harry picks up a heavy looking vase in both hands, his trembling grip is so tight that he fears the damn thing will break.
He hides behind the door frame, leans his back against the hard wall and listens with bated breath.
The door clicks, the wind chimes subtly clink and Harry holds the vase tighter to his chest. He can keep an eye on Draco's lax body on the couch still from the corner of his eyes.
He feels a bulky shadow sliding in, the floor creaks loudly and there's a heavy click that comes with the footsteps. It's in their living room.
Not Snape.
If it goes for Draco, then Harry would attack from behind and smash it with the vase, then start throwing punches.
If it comes for Harry then he throws the vase ahead and then starts kicking the living life out of it. He cannot do much more in this state.
It breathes heavily as it stalks further into the cottage, subtle but still sounds booming to Harry's ears.
'Please don't let it be a death eater.' He prays with dread, actual tears slip out of his clenched eyes. 'Anyone but death eaters is fair game, god. Anyone.'
Harry won't survive another round of torture, furthermore he refuses to endure it a second longer. He won't go mad, he'll just die. His whole arm has started shaking from the strain of gripping the vase too tight.
"Shit," the intruder hisses, his broad back is to Harry and facing Draco. The bastard is staring down at the blond. It's too dark to tell who it might be still.
Harry slowly slides his feet across the floorboards, vase raised over his head and madly trembling.
"Lumos," the rough voice whispers and whirls to face a frozen Harry, his wand directly pointed to his chest. Harry reels back with a scream and the vase drops from his hands, shatters with an ear splitting crash and Harry sinks down with it.
It's over. He thinks in a wild haze of panic. It's over. It's all over. Harry is an idiot. If he'd just thrown the vase at the intruder. Why why why-
"Fuck!" Says the intruder, his voice is oddly familiar but Harry cannot quite place the origin. He cannot breathe.
"Boy, Potter," there's fumbling around Harry's curled form on the floor, a string of curses. A single tear makes it down Harry's chin. He's waiting for it.
He's going to die this time. Both him and Draco.
"Always knew you had a good head on your shoulders, eh?" The voice says, gently as the fumbling goes on. Finally there's a muted click and the back of Harry's eyelids redden.
There were light switches in this place?
"Nasty wire work, this place," the voice grunts, the third click of a cane is much more comprehensible than before.
"Come on, lad. Open your eyes."
Harry's nails are sharp enough to make a dent, he thinks, he can leap at the man, scratch at his face, his eyes... somewhere important.
"Merlin's… alright, I'm just gonna go sit on that armchair. Alright, Potter?" The voice doesn't wait for a reply.
Harry slowly blinks his eyes open to the floor when he's sure the man isn't in immediate vicinity.
He peeks from the corner of his eye.
Moody.
"Easy there," the man grunts at him, "Vase shards and all that. I would clean it up but I'm getting the hint that you're not fond of my wand,"
"God," Harry says, blinking at the man, and raising his head from where it's buried between his arms.
"Not quite," Moody says, with a grim smirk, his fake eye is wildly rolling in its socket, "You bleeding anywhere? You're covered in it,"
"Not mine," Harry mumbles as he scrambles up to a sitting position, he doesn't feel quite ready to stand on his feet yet without crumpling, "Drop your wand."
Moody's eye narrows. "As I said, good head on those shoulders. I'm not going to do that, obviously, but good try,"
He doesn't reel. He wants to, more than anything in the world right in this moment. Harry needs a break, and instead of getting what he so politely asked for after literal torture, the universe throws this guy at him.
'Is he even Mad-Eye Moody for real? Harry, get yourself together!' Sirius is standing right behind him and Harry cannot suppress a flinch.
"Who are…," the words all stumble out with no restraint, "Are you Moody?"
Moody's scarred face stretches into a grin, "Took you long enough to get there." He says, "Go on, make sure."
"That thing you said," he fumbles, hurry hurry, "when I first got to the summer place-"
"Green tongues and crimson heads." There's a slight pause, the man's eyes dart away from him, "I'm not fond of accurate predictions,"
But he was right, wasn't he? This is all Harry's fault. It couldn't have been clearer, he'd been warned and yet here he is, broken into pieces and on the verge of hysteria.
Draco might not even survive the night because of him.
"Oh my God," there are vase shards everywhere, and Harry is barefoot. But he can barely focus on that right now. It feels like most of them went inside his chest and throat.
At least now he knows. It wasn't a death eater. It's an order member. He's not- he's not about to be tortured.
Coward. He is such a coward.
"Hey, Potter. Take it easy." Moody says, he must have noticed that Harry's face is as white as bleached sheets, "You got out," his voice is irritatingly soft.
"No, I didn't," he says, finally getting his bearings. It's as if his head had split open and scattered all his nerves around with the shards of broken china. He cannot get those writhing, squirming things back in his body. He left them in the cell. He's still there. Might be, if this was a delusion after all.
Harry narrows his eyes, "Snape said that this place is discreet-"
"That scum isn't the only person Albus trusts," Moody's mouth twists in distaste, before it reverts back to a gentle drone, "I cannot stay long," the man says in a low voice, "Just a few hours at most."
He treats Harry the way one treats a frightened animal caught in headlights, gentle and cautious, as if Harry might spring and off himself at any given moment. Harry wouldn't dare. He's wary of the pain.
"You look like you need help," Moody says.
Harry regards the man, "I don't know what to say." He cannot even tell if he's being honest.
Moody shrugs, "Don't say a thing then."
Harry doesn't reply and the silence stretches thin between the two of them.
"Come on, Lad. Get off the floor. Have you drank anything? You need to stay hydrated," Moody, using his cane, gets off the creaking armchair, and clunks over to the kitchen. He moves slowly, and Harry can't figure out whether it's because he doesn't know the layout of the place or if it's for Harry's benefit, or if he's injured. And frankly, he's too frazzled to care.
Moody still hasn't put away the wand. Although, at least it isn't pointed anywhere near him, and he isn't using it to get him water. Small mercies are all he has now. His eyes wander to Draco's scabbed face and stay there for a while.
Time doesn't feel real enough to him.
Harry tries picking his way through the vase pieces after a while and manages with only a little nick on the palm. Now that the adrenaline rush has receded, his legs have joined in on the tremor party with his hands.
"Better not to eat anything now," Moody thrusts a glass of water at him, "you'll just turn it over on the floor. Have you taken anything for it?"
"No."
"You should. We cannot have a healer in and out of here, so you better not make yourself sick, kid," the man resettles on the armchair.
"This isn't my fault," Harry still hasn't drunk the water. He thinks he might shatter the glass if he stares at it for too long.
"No, of course not," Harry looks up, expecting to see sarcasm, or mocking. But Moody looks genuinely concerned.
"Stop that," Harry says, frowning, "Stop treating me like that. It's weird!"
"Like what?"
"Like-" he gestures around- "like I'm crazy,"
"You're not," Mad-Eye replies back calmly, and even his fake eye isn't swivelling.
"I know."
"Who was it then?" he asks after a beat, "Lestrange? Malfoy? Snape?"
Harry sets the glass down before it actually shatters, then answering, "Bellatrix. And others. I cannot…" his cheeks flush, "I cannot remember,"
He can. Every single moment of it, he has burned into his brain with blinding clarity.
"Lestrange," Mad-Eye's voice sounds strange, "I've seen what she does. One deranged witch. No one has escaped her sane before, how long did she…?"
"I don't know." Harry interlaces his fingers together in an effort to mask the shaking.
"Ugh shit," Moody's eyes are on Harry's hands, "It's okay, I'm sorry, Potter. That wasn't the best thing to ask, was it? Years of doing the same thing over and over… it desensitizes you,"
"No one's escaped her with their minds intact,"
'I don't find that comforting,' Sirius grumbles.
"Not before you, no. I've seen them dropping like flies, left and right. Insanity is contagious, Potter. And hers…" he shakes his head, "is just beast-like."
"How do you know I'm-"
"You're forming coherent words," he cuts Harry off firmly, as if unwilling to even let Harry consider the possibility, "And your eyes are glazed. I'm not a newbie, Potter. I knew you had it on you the moment I walked in. Constant vigilance." The man taps his forehead with a meaty finger.
"I don't feel sane," he mumbles, but of course Moody catches it.
"Sleep, lots of sleep. There isn't much else you can do," he says with a shrug, "And water. Try avoiding food for the next ten hours. You cannot have it worse than Malfoy's spawn,"
Harry's head whips back to the man, his eyes narrow in a glare, "Don't call him that." He snaps.
Moody doesn't look surprised of Harry's defensive attitude in the slightest, "Sore spot, eh?" He rubs his chin, "Poor lad," it's unclear whether he means Harry or Draco, "He got plagued with the sailor's wrath, didn't he?" Moody throws a glance towards Draco, "The wound on his shoulder,"
"The what?"
"Sailor's wrath. Nasty thing. It never really heals. Whose work is that one?" Harry's stomach tightens a bit at Moody's words, but he forces himself to answer.
"I don't know. It happened really fast, we were… we were trying." Trying is never good enough, he should have- he could have done better, he should have been more alert. "-Trying to get away and then-then he screamed and there was blood and I didn't know what to do." If only he hadn't been so useless.
"That's war," Moody huffs out, as if he can read straight through Harry, "Greyback was there too, I'm assuming? He didn't scratch you, did he?"
"Is Draco going to be-"
"As long as he wasn't bitten, he'll be fine." Moody reassures him, and Harry relaxes minutely, "I can conjure up some shackles if it makes you feel safer, full moon is in two days,"
"No shackles," Harry says, horrified, "No. Just… keep your fucking wand away,"
"I don't suppose you've had time to process all this," he says, and his wand is still in Harry's line of sight. Harry doesn't know if it's better or worse. Moody continues, "Godless world we live in, Potter. There's no mercy. I'm not glad you've come upon it in such a way, but… well."
"I had to anyway?" Harry snaps, suddenly very tired, and the headache making itself known once again, "Is that it? Just because I was born to defeat him, I must endure whatever they throw at me?"
Like mice running in a wheel. Perpetual and inevitable. It's disgusting.
"My apology wouldn't be worth a knot, Potter," Moody's eye swivels over and fixes at him, "I could say that I'm sorry you were tortured. I would mean it, certainly, you're too young to be a soldier. But would it be worth anything to you?"
"Nothing is worth anything to me anymore. She damaged me, I'm not going to get better and this," he holds his hands up, palms out, and they tremble violently, "is going to stay, apparently for the rest of my fucking life,"
Moody stares at his hands pensively, and then looks at Harry's eyes. Without breaking eye contact, Moody sharply holds out his own hands, the wand is seemingly in his non-dominant hand and pointing away, but Harry still has to suppress a flinch.
Bold but not threatening, it takes him a while before he sees what he's supposed to. It catches Harry's attention on a string, very subtle tremors running through Moody's hands. He'd never noticed them before. They look negligible compared to his own, but to him they're monumental.
His heart sinks, "So they'll- they'll truly never go away?"
Snape's words hadn't rung true before. But the evidence is before his eyes now. True and terrifyingly real.
"We all lose things in wars," Moody says, "Things that are not replaceable," he pulls his hands away and sits back, "All of us, at one point or another. Some of us got up and walked away, others… not so much,"
Harry's mind takes a stumble before catching on. Which one does he belong to? The ones that got up or the ones that stayed down? He knows what they look like, he might not have seen Neville's parents, but he's heard of them. He's heard enough.
Sectioned away in a white mental ward, mindless, and unaware of time as life passes by them. They wouldn't know, Harry doesn't think they'd care even if they knew.
"Like Neville's parents?" He can barely hear his own voice.
They won't put him there with them, would they? They need Harry, whether sane or not. They need him. But what if they don't? They'll tie him down to the bed and let him rot away in a windowless room.
And Harry's sure, more than sure, that all too soon, he would cease caring.
"Many more," Moody replies, "But Longbottom's? They were in the first order," his voice darkens, "It was more personal. Frank worked in my cohort." He looks away and then suddenly, as if remembering who he's speaking to, straightens up, "I'll spare you the details, Potter." He says, waves a hand, "You need rest."
"I have to keep an eye on Draco," Harry says quietly, wrapping his arms around himself. His eyes trail to Draco's slumbering body.
"Do it somewhere more comfortable, come on." Moody prompts him, "I'll move him upstairs for you. Strategically safer too, you'd have more time to prepare yourself in case someone else broke in."
He left it unclear whether he's expecting someone like him to break in, or someone like Bellatrix.
Harry wouldn't think about this twice if he were normal.
There are times when Harry almost wishes for the forced facade of normalcy the Dursleys provide, at least there he could pretend to be normal. He knew he wasn't, but they wanted him to be, and went to extremes to make him appear that way. Now? No one bothers, he's… he's special.
Always with the crazy.
No matter what Moody says, he doesn't feel sane. He knows he's not. Moody himself said no one escapes Bellatrix sane. How would Moody know, anyway?
He's not been inside his head.
Even Harry doesn't want to be in his head anymore.