(Totally forgot to put scene breaks in like a durr. sorry about the repost.)
May the bridges you burn
light the way.
"What have you done?" Harry growled at the creature, tempted to start banging on the walls of his mind. Now was not the time to be sleeping.
"It appears the Death Eaters have knocked you out." The thing said, ignoring his question.
"What're they going to do with me?" Harry asked, his voice raising an octave.
"Take you to him."
Harry bit his lip and nodded his head a little to fast.
"That much is pretty clear," he growled, annoyed that he was unconscious at such a crucial time, annoyed to be talking to such a narrow minded being.
"Maybe he'll take me back and flay you. Eat your skin." His other self swayed and put its fingers in its mouth, grinning.
A shiver ran up Harry's spine at the thought. Another quickly followed at the sight before him.
"No way you're a part of me," He said, more to himself. The creature just kept grinning at him.
When he awoke, he was alone. The only thing he could hear was a slow and steady drip somewhere. His glasses were gone.
His surroundings smelt like nothing he'd ever smelt before.
Like something in a very late stage of decay.
"Hello?" He called, though he didn't think there was anyone friendly around.
"Where are you?!" He was caged, the walls looked to be stone, but he wasn't going to touch them to make sure. There were bars in front of him, thick enough for him to see even with his poor vision.
He couldn't understand why they had put him here. No one had replied to his call. Surely they would have brought him straight to Voldemort and killed him right away?
Nothing made sense.
"What are you waiting for?!"
Nothing but the slow and steady drip answered him.
Harry hadn't seen the spell that knocked him unconscious coming. Though, with his poor eyesight, he wouldn't have seen anything short of a bus coming.
"Asleep again? One might think you enjoy my company."
"Shut up." Harry snapped at the creature, trying to ignore the fear bubbling in his stomach.
If they weren't killing him, what were they doing with his unconscious body?
"You're frightened." The thing said, not in a mocking way, just stating a fact.
"No," Harry said, refusing to feel the fear.
"Fear is good." It said, tilting it's head in a confused way, like it couldn't understand Harry's reluctance.
"No, it isn't." The Boy Who Lived was chewing his thumb nail, gazing up at the 'roof' and willing himself to wake up faster. Though he didn't know what he'd do if he did wake.
"Why not?" The creature insisted, and Harry glared at it.
"Because it just isn't. It makes you vulnerable."
"Fear makes you stronger. Faster." It nodded along with itself.
"I'm not afraid." Harry insisted, now pacing.
"You are." The creature told him calmly.
"Fine! Fine. I'm scared."
"I know."
Harry found that he was really sore when he opened his eyes.
As far as he could tell, he hadn't been moved, but he knew better. Why knock him out for no reason? They had done something to him, the pain he felt was testament to that.
He looked down at his shirt, trying to pin point his wounds.
He found that there were red patches on his previously white shirt, and underneath were letters carved into his skin.
He couldn't quite make out what they were, but he didn't think he'd ever seen them before. They were deep, and looking at them made him woozy.
He wasn't sure if he had lost a lot of blood or not.
"What do you want from me! Show yourselves!"
He was yet to see a single person since he had been captured. He wasn't even sure how long he had been there for.
He knew he was getting hungry. And that he he needed to use the toilet.
There were no windows, he didn't know if it was day or night. He slid down the stone wall and grimaced at the fresh pain. He had counted seven letters carved into his chest, still weeping through his shirt.
He felt for sure that the dreams had been having were connected. He just wished he could remember them.
The smell wasn't bothering him much any more. It was the dripping. For some reason it made him want to break down and sob.
"Where are you?!" He yelled again, his voice rougher than it had been moments before.
No one answered but the drip.
What seemed like months passed this way. But maybe it was only days.
Harry felt as if they wanted him alive, but only barely. He didn't know why. They left his wounds to fester, seeping filth through his shirt at an almost constant rate.
The state of his cell got increasingly awful, along with Harry himself.
He was to weak to do much about it, even if he could. His skin felt blazingly hot and frightfully cold all at the same time, and he could barely move.
Every time he slept he awoke with new wounds. He still hadn't seen a single face since his capture, and he could barely remember the night he had been caught.
Had it really been Malfoy?
Had he ever really been free?
His life seemed very far away. Like he had witnessed it, but never lived it. Where were his friends now? No one had come for him. Surely they were trying to find him?
The only time he didn't feel pain was when he slept, though he feared that too. He still didn't know what he dreamt about, but it instilled a deep sense of dread in him, like he was falling from a cliff every time he closed his eyes.
He could never fight it though; he was in and out of conciousness more times than he could count.
"Good evening," The creature said. He was leaning against the far wall, arms folded across his tailored suit, a grin plastered on his handsome face.
"Eat shit," Harry growled, setting about his usual task of trying to wake up.
"You still fight us so."
"Damn right I do," Harry growled, not looking at the only person he'd had any contact with in what felt like forever.
"Why don't you sit and talk with me?" It purred, and Harry pursed his lips.
"Just because you suddenly speak like a sane person doesn't mean I want to talk to you." He replied, still not looking at his other self.
"I'm stronger than you now. You should see yourself." It told him, and Harry automatically looked down.
It was as if he and the creature had been slowly swapping places.
He was naked, bony and blackened, as if he had been burned. He could feel blackness leaking from his mouth. The wounds he sustained when he slept appeared here, too, pus covered and bloodied. He could sometimes watch the new ones appear.
"It's only a matter of time before he realises that what he is doing is fruitless." This wasn't the first time his other self had said this, or something similar.
Harry didn't know what that meant.
He never asked.
He could feel his mind spinning wrong, on an angle. He figured it wouldn't be long until it feel of it's axis and he lost his sanity.
"Poor poor daddy. Fighting all the time. Not fighting anything." Sometimes it still spoke the way it used to, though he thought that it was now just to unnerve him, not because it was still of it's rocker.
"You know that you aren't, though. Right? There's nothing to fight, and even if there was, you're not doing it correctly." The creature said after a moment of silence.
"How do you suggest I do it correctly?" Harry snarled, planning to disregard whatever the thing said next.
"I wouldn't know. I've never fought nothing." It smirked at him and blinked slowly, reminding Harry of an overfed cat.
"But it's pretty clear that if I were ever to try, I'd wind up just like you." He grinned wider, as though his joke was quite impressive.
Harry looked down at his chest instead of answering, watching the new wounds overlap the old.
This was generally a sign that he would wake soon.
He looked back at the Other that occupied his head, once again willing himself to remember this when he woke.
He must have been hallucinating, but he could swear that he heard his headmaster shouting spells.
And Lupin.
Was that Sirius?
He forced one eye open.
"Here," He gasped, because if he wasn't tripping out of his head, he needed them to find him.
"Where is he! Where is my godson!"
Harry groaned and tried to roll, sure now that this was really happening.
"Siri-" His call was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, that he was glad for, because it was surely louder than his pathetic voice.
He heard a door being thrown open, and the chaos behind it roared in his ears, startling him with its loudness.
"Harry! Are you here-" The voice choked and gagged, and for a brief second, Harry was deeply embarrassed by how he must look, by how he must smell.
"Merlin, Harry I'm so sorry."
He couldn't see Sirius, because he hadn't quite managed his roll earlier, but he heard a sob in his god fathers voice.
His one open eye slipped closed as he passed out, for the first time hopeful that when he woke up, he might not be in the cell.
"Your friends are right on time." The creature said, inspecting his fingernails.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked, taking the bait.
"Do you really think they would have found you without a little shove in the right direction?" It asked, smiling warmly at the Boy Who Lived.
"What's that supposed to mean," Harry asked again, more aggressively.
"That the Dark Lord decided that his original method was to slow and clumsy. Not guaranteed."
Harry growled, swiping at his chin, annoyed with the seeping blackness.
"It wont matter if I tell you anyway, when you awake, safe and warm in your hospital bed, what I've said will slip from your mind."
"All the more reason for you to tell me. It wont matter because I cant tell a soul. It'll give you a sick satisfaction, telling me, wont it?" Harry said, and he knew had been successful in probing for answers.
"Ah, you're right, of course darling. See how well you and I understand each other? Mere hours and we're already seeing eye to eye."
Harry had been about to snap again, but the creature held up his hand to silence him.
"The Dark Lord has bond us together. Not completely, not yet. But soon, there'll be no way to discern who is who, we'll be one. Our dreams, ambitions, beliefs and personalities will be the same, and the beautiful thing is, you wont know until it's to late! And by then, you wont care, either." The creatures face had become more animated, more excited, as it continued its speech.
"What," Harry said, as if his breath had all gone away.
"Genius, isn't it? See, he discovered that you had taken all the darker parts of yourself, the questionable parts, the ones that might possibly make your friends frown at you, and attached them to the magic he placed in you by accident. Making me. Alive and dying in your head. So he's decided to smash us back together, making you who you were supposed to be; if you hadn't oppressed yourself so much. He's confident that you, as you should be, would be an asset to his cause."
The creature looked ridiculously pleased with itself, and Harry felt no better knowing this. In fact; he felt ten times worse.
He still didn't quite understand what this meant for him, but if the creature was right, and every bad thing he had ever felt was coming back, he wasn't confident about his friends safety, or his own.
But he couldn't warn them, or even himself.
"Harry? Harry! He's waking up, Ron!" This was Hermione. Harry flinched at the loudness of her voice, not used to any noise besides a steady drip.
"Harry, mate, you've been asleep for two days!" Ron said, and Harry forced his eyes open. It felt as if he hadn't slept enough.
"How long did they have me for?" He rasped, asking the first question that came to him.
"Almost a month," Hermione answered, looking concerned.
"Dumbledore wouldn't let us see you at first, said you were in a pretty bad way." There was a question in Ron's voice, a silent 'What happened?' it wasn't long till Hermione asked the actual question.
"What did they do to you?" She was concerned, reaching for him and hesitating for a tiny moment, as if he might bite.
The truth was, Harry didn't know what they did. They carved symbols into his skin and neglected his most basic needs. It was quite tame, really, considering what he was sure they were capable of.
"I'd rather not talk about it," Harry said, instead of 'I don't know,' he knew he'd have to tell Dumbledore.
And then his friends.
He couldn't help but feel his whole life was a constant retelling of his misfortune.