A/N: Thanks for the reviews, favourites, and alerts. Chapter Warning: gore. Happy Reading.

Warm Me Up

It was the only way. It was the only way. It was the only way…

That's what I was telling myself. That's the only thing I was telling myself, hoping that the mantra would both reassure me and drown out the vengeful gnawing of a dozen barbs jabbing through my skin. I could see their needle-sharp ends pointing up at me, their unassuming tips belying the wide bases attached to…sod it. It bloody hurts. Moving as little as possible would minimize the agony. But, my tissues were eating themselves around the metal and I'd be damned if Harry didn't hurry up and get whatever was in that godforsaken chest so I could have my arms back in more or less one piece.

Contrary to all common sense, he rushed at me and yanked on my wrists. He pulled, desperately, but the only thing that achieved was making my lungs expel the water sitting in them whilst I went through all the motions of shrieking without actually making a sound. Stabbing pain shot up my shoulders and sent me into a squirming fit. The more he struggled the more the barbs resisted, and I could feel what felt like tiny hooks digging deeper into my flesh.

I kicked my feet flippers at him and the motion itself seemed to confuse him enough to make him stop. Telepathy didn't work without a charm or potion but I was trying my best to say 'Harry, the horcrux. Get the bloody horcrux'.

Clever, I thought. Spearing yourself was the only way to open the chest, and yet you couldn't actually move to get what was in it. Anyone daring to come alone would drown. I should've anticipate something like that, to be fair. No one ever said Voldemort was stupid.

It must've been magic because I saw that spark of recognition in his eyes and he left me alone long enough to grab the horcrux in the trunk and the one so curiously attached to the outside of it. I had just enough time to see the lid snap shut and the locket latch on to Hufflepuff's Cup before I gritted my teeth together, planted my feet on the wall, and pushed back, betting on my momentum to get the barbs out of my arms. They slid out surprisingly easy, and the release was so complete it was near euphoric.

That's when the tingling started. It was a whisper. Quiet, soft. A fluttering feeling that grew and grew into a thundering itch. My cells were suddenly in a frenzy, the holes themselves bleeding and itching and throbbing and throbbing.

Oh no oh shit! No! NoNoNoNo.

I clawed at them, tearing into the tissue with a fervor. A cloud of blood darkened my field of view but I didn't need to see to know where to focus my attentions. The feeling, the itching, was enough. It didn't stop no matter how much skin collected under my fingernails.

Harry was next to me before I knew it and he took one of my arms. The itch felt like it was in my bloody bones and I kept scratching because please, I wanted it to stop. He kept shoving my hand away from the open wounds because he didn't understand. He wasn't feeling it. He couldn't understand unless he was feeling it.

He was looking at my arm even as I tried pulling it back, turning it this way and that way and I knew he thought he was helping me but I needed to get rid of that bloody itch dear Merlin, I'm begging.

I twisted and tugged, trying to get at my arm. I was kicking at him again and again and again and I could see that I was scaring him but I couldn't bloody breathe. With the panic blurring my brain I thought I was hyperventilating from fear alone but that wasn't the case. I actually wasn't getting much oxygen at all.

Our gills were closing. Our time was up.

Harry must have felt it too because he got distracted enough for me to pull away. I darted ahead, survival instinct seizing control of my mind long enough for me to know that I could dismember myself later on dry land. I couldn't scratch whilst swimming but I wanted to, trust me. Though, the itch became only one of my worries when saltwater made my self-inflicted cuts and gashes sting.

I would've stopped and…and done what, exactly? I didn't know but I did know that if it weren't for the fact that we were about to drown, I would've stopped. I bit my tongue and fought through the pain and the terrible itch. Self preservation was at its best.

I still didn't regret impaling myself on that vile chest. It was the only way.

We got out of the ship with minimal scrapes and began our ascent. The webs on my fingers and toes were quickly thinning and ebbing. Soon the only things getting me by were ungraceful arm waves and quick, choppy jabs of my feet. Any heightened swimming ability gillyweed so graciously granted us vanished as quickly as it came.

Despite my wounds I was a bit ahead of him on account of him having only one slightly-webbed hand to help him along. In his other hand, he clenched the Cup, holding on to it for dear life. We weren't far from the surface. We could make it. We could both make it.

The water felt a hell of a lot colder than it used to. My teeth were chattering and my eyesight blurred, as my mostly human body remembered that people were rubbish at seeing underwater. It didn't matter though. The only direction we were going was up. Black pinpricks dotted my vision and my lungs felt crushed. My starved brain was telling me to breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe and if I hadn't broken the surface right then I would've gotten a lungful of North Sea instead of sweet, merciful air.

I gagged. The air was foul. I realized my mistake the moment I opened my eyes.

I wasn't cold because of the water. I was cold because hordes of dementors were skimming just above the surface and I just appeared in the thick of them.

They swarmed me. The shock was paralyzing. The frost and mist of their presence turned the water on my skin to ice and I was frozen, with no option but to surrender to the smell of death and rotting flesh. Within seconds I was enveloped in the swaths of their robes and I couldn't see anything but black hopelessness.

One of the creatures peered into my face. It didn't have one, I realized. Its skin was scabbed over and there were just deep, endless voids where its eyes should have been. I could hear the rattling of its stinking breath in my eardrums and it was all I could hear and all I've ever heard.

In an instant I was sobbing. Full on sobbing. My chest ached violently and forget about my arms, everything stung and everything hurt.

"Harry!" I cried, the name shrill on my tongue. I thought I heard him come up next to me but I couldn't see anything through the tears wracking my body. The mission failed and it was all my fault. We lost. It was over, all over. The entire wizarding world was counting on us and now it was all over. Failure constricted my throat and settled in my belly, filling me from the inside, out. I couldn't take it. I wanted to die.

Just then I felt a sharp yank on my ankle. I was being dragged back under the sea by one of those serpent mermaids, I was sure. Water rushed up my nose and into my mouth but I didn't fight it. I wanted to drown. I deserved it.

The deeper I sank the more absurd I sounded to myself. I could just make out the rush of Harry's kicking feet as he swam up to the surface. Oh, Boy Wonder. Saving me yet again. I had the absence of mind the note how pretty the water looked when it lit up with a bright, white light.

The next thing I knew I was falling through the air with that gut-wrenching unmistakable sense of apparition. I landed on my back on hard-packed ice and water splashed down on and around me as the last of the Sea clung to us. I heard Harry scrambling to his knees.

"Oh God did I splinch you? Hermione?" I could hear him, and I could feel him patting my cheek. My head lolled loosely and he grabbed it, forcing my face straight. "Hey! Open your eyes!"

I turned to my side and retched out seawater and muck. It tasted like shit. Coughs and shivers shook me and through it all I could feel that itch creeping back up my arms.

"Can you walk? Can you – damn it." I was hauled up off the ground, which made me even woozier than I already was. The night was cold and my clothes were soaking wet. A heat came over me then, as if it heard me whinging, and I wasn't sure whether it was a warming charm or a fever but it dragged me down into the realm of quiet sleep.

Well, almost quiet.

The buzzing pulled me out of it. An agitated electric buzz clattering metal near my ear. My eyes snapped open and my pupils ached in protest and I looked and I looked, but I couldn't see the source. I couldn't see anything in the low light. My head was fuzzy. I didn't know where I was or where the sound…My eyes widened in horror when I realized that it wasn't a sound that woke me at up all. It was the bloody itch.

"Hermione?" My name was a question, and judging by the tone of his voice I could tell it was a question that needed an answer. But so did the itch. I sat up so fast my tendons strained but the itch didn't care about my neck or my feelings, it just wanted to be scratched. I raked at my arms and at the red-stained bandages covering up those throbbing holes on my quaking skin. "Hey! Stop it!"

Harry grabbed me. I jerked away, but my back pressed against something solid.

"Let me go!" I cried as I tried to wrench out of his grasp. It felt like maggots were nesting in my muscles. Flies!, I thought. The buzzing! I yelped, caught between swatting away the imaginary bugs and digging the infestation out myself. Harry and I were scrambling for leverage. My wounds were open again. The burn. It was too much.

"Calm down! Breathe!" He said. He was finally able to grip both of my hands but he was too late, the bandages were already shredded. Just one scratch! Just one. I fell sideways on whatever I was laying on and he came down with me.

"Get off!" Fuck, I couldn't reach them. I couldn't reach my arms. I squirmed and shrieked. He didn't understand!

"Bloody hell, Hermione!" A heavy weight settled on my centre as he straddled me and pinned my hands down with his.

"It itches!" I bucked but gravity wasn't on my side.

"I know, Just–"

"It itches! It itches!" I squirmed, I arched. The itching, it was driving me mad!

"Look at me! I know!"

"You don't know anything!" I didn't look. I didn't want to look, I watched to rip my bloody arms off.

He made a frustrated growl and for a second my left arm was free to tear long stripes up my right. I felt so good I nearly moaned. Blood was welling up in the ridges but before I could sink my nails in a second time both my arms were pinned down with a sticking charm.

I looked at him then. He was panting and sweating and pointing my wand, my wand, at me. Tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. Betrayal felt hot on my cheeks.

"I'm sorry." He said quietly. He tucked loose hair strands behind my ears and smoothed down my mane. "I'm sorry but I can't let you hurt yourself."

"It itches, Harry." I couldn't lift my wrists but I tried. "It itches like you wouldn't believe."

A sadness seemed to cloak his eyes at the words. I could see the struggle to give a reassuring smile.

"I'll have you patched up again in no time." He said. He got off me slowly, carefully. I couldn't lash out even if I wanted to. I watched as he sat down on an old coffee table that creaked under his weight. A couch, I was on a couch. A hard, lumpy one at that. Moths had eaten away at the now threadbare fabric. Some of them were still crawling on the ceiling.

I should have be used to waking up in strange places by then but it never got any easier. This time it was a small cramped couch in a small cramped room. With the taste of dust in the air and the paltry amount of light filtering through the room's one filthy window, it felt like we were in a casket.

Harry unstuck one of my wrists, unwound the remains of the bandages, and started cleaning the wounds. I hissed at the astringent burning of the antiseptic. It hurt so bad it ought to be working. I watched the blood disappear the more he dabbed at my skin. With child-like fascination I confirmed that I was indeed pink on the inside.

"Why'd you do it?" He asked. His brow furrowed. Mine did too, but at the numb tickling more than anything else. "I've seen Imperius before and it didn't look a thing like that."

"I had to." I knew that question was coming even before I impaled myself on the spikes. I had my answer at the ready.

"You should've let me." His response was almost immediate.

"Yeah, and you would have left your blood on that spiteful chest. The last time he had a piece of you, he made himself a new body, remember?" Of course Harry would have done it. That's why I had to do it first.

His eyes were downcast, face sinking with the weariness of the day. He was so pale he glowed, his own cuts and bruises standing out like inverse stars with the contrast. It was all finally catching up to him, to both of us. The remains of our disguises still hung off our bodies, though the colours were faded and everything about the clothes spelt ruin. The golds and glitters of the day were gone, washed away. The glamour of the circus proved to be a trick of the light, the greatest sham of grandeur I'd ever seen. A heaping pile of it was in the corner of the room feeding the mildewing floor.

"Right. You're right…" I saw him uncover the jar of salve he used for his Nagini bites. I would've argued against wasting it on me but the instant cooling it provided shut me up before I could. "I just wish that I could've done something more."

"You did a lot." I said. The more of it Harry slathered on, the more the itch melted. It was such a sharp difference to my prickling right arm that it took most of my strength to keep still.

"I should've done more."

"Stop it." I said. His eyes snapped up to mine, and he paused. I could see the "What?" forming on his lips but I spoke first. "Didn't those sea snakes knock you around enough? You don't have to beat yourself up too."

The smile he gave at that was slow and lazy. It was like he was remembering a fond memory.

"The merserpents." He muttered. He finished dressing my arm in clean gauze.

"You've gone and named them?"

"Have you come up with something better?"

"No, I guess not." I replied. Merserpents it was.

"I'm going to release your other hand. I need you to sit up and try not to touch yourself."

I grinned.

"Really now?"

He smirked a bit at his own slip.

"You know what I mean."

Sitting up was easy enough. The second part of the request, not so much. My fingers were eager to have at the throbbing holes on my unwrapped arm. I might have looked like I was considering it because I soon felt a warming on my free palm as it was planted on the couch cushion.

"A precaution." He said. I nodded my thanks. He started on the other and I continued the conversation we were having in our small, cramped casket of a room.

"I was so focused on getting through the mines that I didn't see when you got nabbed. Caught off guard, were you?"

"Ha. I thought she was you but when I turned to check, something happened. Couldn't look away."

"Almost sounds like Veela magic. Maybe only works on men." I said. It was a possible theory. The creatures were obvious repellents if you asked me. "Mermaids are known to lure sailors to sea and drown them. These weren't like any mermaids I've ever seen though. Their pupils were slits."

"Because they were merserpents." Harry said as a matter of fact. He was so infatuated with this word that I let him have it. At least one of us was having a laugh.

"Merserpents, right. I'll see what I can find out about them in the bestiary." I replied. The cooling of the salve had my eyes fluttering close in relief. "You reckon it's karma?"

"Hmm?"

"You know." I waved about my bandaged limb. The white material covering it to the elbow was already flecking with red again. "I did cut off two of her arms."

"Well she had her grubby hands on me and you've always been the jealous type." He said. His humour lightened the mood, but only slightly. "What's with Death Eaters and snakes anyway? Must be their bloody mascot."

"Did you try speaking to them in Parseltongue?"

"Don't think I could've, being underwater and all. Also there's this little thing about swimming for my life."

I nodded. "I wonder what they would've said though."

"Probably something very unpleasant." He responded. They didn't look very nice at all, did they? I don't suppose they would've given us directions. "I sure as hell didn't see any at the circus. I guess no one is stupid enough to try to catch them."

"How could anyone be stupid enough to catch any of those creatures?" I snapped, though not at him in particular. The rage I felt shook me almost as much as the shivers did earlier. "Do you think they're okay?"

"I can't say, Hermione. I was with you the whole time." Harry finished up with the dressings and unstuck my other arm.

"That's true. Sorry." I rubbed absentmindedly at my wrists, frowning. I could see Harry watching me carefully. I wasn't going to rip the bandages off, I decided. The crazed need to do so was lessened along with the itch. "That girl, she was at the coffee shop in Godric's. They snatched her and put her in a cage like she was nothing. Is that what we're becoming?"

"We're nothing like them."

"I meant the wizarding world, Harry. Is that what we're destined to become?"

"Not if we can help it." He said. The "we" as opposed to "I" was clear. He was learning.

"You think maybe Murray..."

"Doubt it. He was too smashed to tie his own shoes. Those other two in the alley will be having a rough time of it too."

"I left her wand. They'll work something out." Hopefully. I couldn't say much about whether they'd still have jobs but I was sure they still had their lives, at least.

I sat up straighter, a sense of dread coming over me. Wind was howling through the cracks in the wooden walls. I felt stupid looking around for one of them, but of course they were gone. For all the trouble we'd been through, the horcrux better be safe.

"Where's–"

"I tossed it. Didn't need anyone using it to try and find us."

"You what?" I got to my feet and nearly stumbled over them. Harry stood up too.

"I got rid of it, Hermione. I thought it made sense."

"The horcrux?"

"What? No, the other wand."

I exhaled.

"You bloody scared me for a second there."

"You bloody scared yourself. I've got it. Them." It was almost like he couldn't believe it either. Two of them. We've got two pieces of Voldemort's soul.

"You reckon it's safe to have them together in the same place?" I asked.

"Not one bit. I'm wearing the locket right now and I've got the Cup stashed–"

"Give it to me."

"What?"

"The locket. You've been wearing it too long. Give it here." I reached for the neckline of his shirt, meaning to take the thing myself. I could see it tucked away in there, probably sitting on the scar it left on his skin. Imagine my surprise when he leaned out of my reach and put his hand over the lump in the cloth. I raised my eyebrows at him.

"I don't think so. This thing, I dunno. It's barmy."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It found the chest, not me. Nearly killed me doing it, too."

"It found the chest by itself?" This particular horcrux had a habit of doing peculiar things, but finding another horcrux had to top the list. I had seen it wiggling on the jewelled surface but there was so much going on that I hadn't put much thought into it at the time.

"That's what I said."

"But…" But nothing. It found the chest by itself. I believed that without needing too much convincing. That locket was a nasty piece of dark magic. If it could make me almost cast a Cruciatus curse on Harry Potter, it could find a bloody chest.

"It was fine before but once we got into the ship, it had a mind of its own." He said. Harry had it out now, and he was holding it up in front his face. It looked the same as always to me. "Was trying to lead me like a dog on a leash."

Hearing that made me all sorts of uneasy.

"We've got to destroy it." I said, glaring at the object of my disdain. It didn't make any kind of response but I wouldn't have been surprised if it did.

"I know."

"We need that Sword."

"I know."

"I don't think you should wear it either."

"I know." He said. These are things we knew, and things that we knew we could do nothing about right then. We had two horcruxes and not even one way to get rid of them. What are we going to do, keep finding more so we can put them on a shelf somewhere for display? Being in such a situation would make anyone feel exhausted.

Harry rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes and pressed the heel of his hand against his temple. "You're pretty banged up. It's safer if I hold on to it. Just for now anyway."

He looked pretty banged up himself.

"Have you rested?" Why I even asked was a mystery in and of itself. I sat and started shuffling over on the couch before he replied with a, "Can't sleep and fix you up at the same time, can I?"

"Come, get on." The cushions had seen better days but they had to be better than hardwood. Harry tried to escape it, as I knew he would. He had to get a fire going in that soggy fireplace. He had to check the perimeter charms again. He had to do everything but take care of himself. I decided that he was allergic to the idea. The very thought of it must make him break out in hives.

A pointed stare and exasperated sigh later on his part and he settled down next to me. The couch was hardly made for two people (its lumpiness implied it was hardly made for one), but it worked. We laid on our sides, facing each other, getting reacquainted with our faces the way they ought to be without the polyjuice.

"Did we actually make it out alive?" I asked.

"I think so." was the appropriate response. We rested there in what must have been the only dull moment we had in twenty-four hours. It was nice doing nothing, if only for a little bit.

"Where are we?"

"The hut on the rock." He replied. He said it as if the term was common knowledge. He might as well had said we were in Asgard, awaiting Odin's arrival to the great hall of Valhalla.

"Never heard of it."

"It's a shack. The Dusleys', they took me here hoping I'd stop getting my Hogwarts letters." His tired eyes stared at some point over my shoulder but I kept looking at his face, already enraptured with his story. Harry wasn't one to freely tell anyone about his childhood. It was the first time I've ever heard him speak like this about it, so candid. Maybe it was the way the walls in here were so close and stripped bare that made even Boy Wonder bare his soul. "Didn't work very well though. Hagrid came. And he brought me a cake for my birthday."

"Was it any good?"

"Best cake I've ever had."

I bet it was, I thought. He grinned that boyish grin of his.

Laying so still, it felt like the waves were still running over me. I could still feel the currents swirling on my skin. Rocking back and forth, that's what it felt like. I was rocking back and forth without moving at all. Just then I heard waves crash outside. Actual waves. I nearly sat up in alarm. Where–

"We're nowhere near Scotland." He said soothingly. "The dementors can't get to you. You're safe."

I didn't feel safe. Of course they could get to me. He must've known that. The dementors did as they pleased ever since they joined the likes of Voldemort. There had been reports of them terrorizing muggle villages and making everyone miserable. Whilst they were natural allies to the dark, in truth the dementors had no loyalties and served anyone who gave them souls. We had two souls right there, ready to be served up on a shiny silver platter.

"We don't have any chocolates, sorry. I checked." he said.

"Didn't think we would." Any such luxury items would have been eaten long ago. We'd just have to find other ways to warm me up.

"I felt them when I broke the surface and thought you felt them too." He started, by way of an answer to the question I hadn't asked yet.

"That wasn't a coincidence." I said. Even past their feeding time, there were so many of them in once place. They were waiting for something, for us. "How did they know exactly where we were?"

"Maybe taking the Cup tipped them off? Bugger if I know." We were both quiet. Until he asked, "How'd it feel?"

I could feel his breath tickling my lips. I could feel the seaweed stuck to my back, and the salt sitting on my skin. I had just experienced the broad range of human emotion, enough for several lifetimes and then some. He had to be more specific.

"Being out there with them. How'd it feel?"

"It felt like… like facing that one in the elevator at the Ministry, multiplied by a hundred." I whispered it, like they'd hear me if I spoke too loud. I also felt like dying, I wanted to say. But I didn't say it. I didn't want to admit it to myself. "What memory did you use? For the Patronus?"

He didn't answer for a bit and kept on looking at me. I could feel him drawing patterns on my hips.

"Well, go on." I prodded.

"Remember that time, after the tent burned down? Everything was so shit. But then you gave me the Christmas gift and it all just seemed… okay again."

"Harry…"

I threaded our fingers together and he pressed my hand tight, like he'd never let go.