Light floods the room, but he cannot tell if it's moonlight or if the sun has yet to rise fully. He thinks of Remus and shakes his head too fast—too hard. There is a buzzing as he clutches his ears and waits, his world narrowing to the shallow in and out of breath.
"Remus is gone. Remus and Tonks. Teddy. Remus is gone. Remus. Oh gods, Remus." Slivers of light wrap and tangle around his body, manacles on the flesh that he no longer wants to keep alive. He slides to the ground in a heap. Hands cup his protruding ribs, which heave with the effort of trying to steady himself, to keep a little bit of him in this world and not tumbling into that where he can be with Remus, with Sirius. His fingernails clutch firmly at skin, leave putrid nail marks in skin, and cause bloody trails across skin. Skin means he is alive.
He wasn't once. For a blessed while, he couldn't feel the pain. He couldn't feel anything. They brought him back to fight. Fighting, screaming, death. So much death. Fred. Remus. Tonks. Snape. So many more died for him, because of him.
"No. No. No. NO!"
He is up, moving, pacing. His feet have worn a path into the wood floor over the last several days. At some point, he stopped wearing socks, as the heels wore out and he built up calluses around the holes where his skin grew agitated from having fabric there in the first place. The soft slap of his feet traps the noise of his thumb tapping against his elbow until his arms flail wildly and are once again at his ears, trying to hold the noise in, rather than out.
"He's dead. I know he's dead. I killed him. He's dead. Why wouldn't he be dead? He could… No, he's dead. Could he? Don't be stupid, Harry!" This is punctuated with the heel of his hand to a temple, repeated twice until the pacing resumes. "There are wards. This is the Manor. There are wards here. The wards don't matter. They don't matter. He broke them. He broke them. He can get in. Maybe he's already here."
Harry rushes to the window, trying to lift the pane, but the elves have already safeguarded such action by charming them all shut. "Fuck. I need to get out! Help me! Help me! I'm stuck. I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I'm drowning!" He's clawing at his throat again and when the window refuses to budge, either by opening or after banging the nearby chair against its seemingly brittle frame, Harry is on his knees.
"There is another. He made another. More than one. Yes, more than one. Draco would know. Draco was here. Tovo!" The little elf pops into the room by the door opposite where Harry kneels, staring wide-eyed at him.
"Yes, mister Harry Potter, sir?" Her voice is tremulous, unsure. She peeks around the bed to see that he hasn't moved.
"Draco. You need to get Draco."
"Master Draco is at work, sir. Tovo isn't to be getting him, sir." She looks down at the floor, waiting for some sort of punishment. Harry jumps up and she squeaks, rushing to hide behind the nearby table.
"You were here, weren't you? Do you know if he's got one?" Harry is crawling toward her and she continues to skirt around the furniture away from him.
"Tovo isn't sure what mister is asking about. What is mister looking for?"
"The horcruxes, Tovo. He's got another one! You know where it is. I know you do. Tell me where it is. I can destroy it. I'm sure if I called it, the sword would come to me. I need to kill him. I need to kill him. He's not dead." Harry's eyes are burning with a fever that has no real cure. Tovo winces as she watches her charge thrash against the wall, bruise his exposed shin, and continue walking.
She checks on him several times that evening. Each time he calls her, it's the same thing. He asks her where the horcrux is, or perhaps where Voldemort himself is. Maybe he is confusing the two; maybe in his mind they are both alive and worthy of the anguish he puts himself through. Tovo wrings her hands in the stained fabric of her garment each time she enters the room and finds him more manic, less able to walk and talk and make any sense of the world. It is a relief to her when she checks on him in the late hours of the evening and he is passed out from pure exhaustion—of the mind or body, she cannot say. All Tovo can do is get him to bed, cast some cleaning charms, and leave food for the next time he wakes. She fervently hopes he eats something before it starts over again; there aren't many days when his clarity outpaces the onset of lunacy and she can see him failing.
The manor breathes loudly in the aftermath of the new moon. Darkness reigns over the grounds and Harry's movements are quiet to those who sleep as if they are safe. He can feel eyes on him from darker shadows that elude his grasp, so he sticks to what he knows.
It only takes a few days to find it. After all, he nearly always sees Draco with a glass in hand and, even when he doesn't, it wouldn't have been difficult to follow his nose. In a room such as this, the curtains are never drawn. The French windows span the room, letting in obscure light from observant constellations and Fae alike. Harry's fingers trail along the granite counter, each faltering step just one more toward complete obliteration.
The glasses clink together and Harry breathes deeply, eyes lowering to stare at them as if they are misbehaving and need reprimand. He grabs one, barely holds on to it as he walks farther toward the end of the counter, and sets it down rather loudly. He laughs harshly at himself, then hiccups on air and desperation. The liquid sloshes into the glass without grace. It leaves a sticky film behind with fingerprints pointing toward the culprit, but he isn't aware enough to care. The first glass is gone.
He pours another; this one quickly follows the first. He smacks his lips after it burns his toes and he wriggles his fingers to be sure everything still works. A nod. Another drink. The bottle refreshes itself. He smiles. It's a shy smile, but Harry lets it happen. He lets it out for a trial run since he's not quite sure how to contain it or how it happened in the first place. Perhaps he'll have to get rid of it. A sip. Two more. Another drink gone.
His feet are moving again. Stone tiles are crisp beneath his bones. Bones are rattling beneath his clothes, but again, he isn't quite sure how that happened, so he lets it go and continues. He thinks that he sounds somewhat like a child's toy—rattling, shuffling, clinking. Harry laughs, and the sound is dry. Glass raised to the sky, he feels a tear slide down his cheek.
One is joined by many and the liquid courage in his glass is not enough to drown his sorrows. At this point, he's grown roots next to a gazing pond and feels aptly out of reflection. Harry's limbs are no longer moving, and the alcohol has done its job. All he can think about is everything he wishes to forget. He considers the pool and lurches forward, fully intent on drowning himself.
"Please, please let me go," is the last thing he remembers.
Some mornings, the elves rouse Narcissa or Draco from their chambers to bring Harry back into the manor. On occasion, he doesn't wake when they move him. There are several evenings when Narcissa watches the entire thing play out from her balcony, only to retreat into her sanctuary, unable to cope with the drunkard in her gardens. Those evenings, she feigns illness if the house elves come for her.
There are some nights, though, when Harry does not make things easy in the slightest. One night, after chasing nightmares through the maze for hours, Harry falls near the stables. He would have remained asleep for a long while except for the peacock plucking at his unruly hair, likely mistaking it for flobberworms. Harry wakes with a start, thrashing violently. The screaming summons Tovo, who pops next to him in a flash.
"Snake. It can't be. He killed her. She's dead. Oh Merlin. She's dead, but she's right there, but she's dead." The entire time, Harry is pointing at the peacock, whose saucer-eyes are blinking slowly at him. When it advances toward him again, Harry shrieks and scrambles toward Tovo. "She's a horcrux, but she's dead. We killed her. Get Neville! He has the sword! He has to kill the snake!"
"What in Salazar is going on out here?" Draco materializes out of the darkness, a flash of moonlight in the otherwise lightless evening. Tovo looks up at him with desperate eyes as Harry clings to her.
"Get Neville! You know where he is! We need the sword!"
"What the fuck happened to you, Potter? Are you drunk?"
"M'not dru—eughhhh—"
The proof of Harry's evening exploits ends up on Draco's bare feet.
"You did not just do that. I will fucking kill you for that." Draco sighs and points at the ground. "Clean it up." Harry lifts his head, groans, attempts to move his wand arm, but Tovo casts a cleaning charm and glares.
"Master Draco, sir. I will take care of him, sir."
"You'd best see that you do. And what is that smell?" Tovo looks around, then down at Harry.
"It seems Mister Harry Potter has messed himself, sir." Draco snorts, throws his hand in the air, then disapparates. Tovo clicks to herself, casts another charm to pull the urine from Harry's clothing and disapparates them both to his rooms.