(TW: Torture in this chapter.)
Devil I Know, Allie X
I think I made a big mistake
You keep messing with my brain
You tell me, "Eat the whole cake," it's what I deserve
Every time I take your lead, feels like a curse
And every time I try to stop, feels even worse
Baby, you're the devil I know (I know)
Better than the devil I don't (I don't)
Maybe I could stop, but I won't (I won't)
'Cause baby you're the devil I know (I know)
I know
I could pretend that I'm just praying now
But I'm only on my knees
Harry wanted to ask several more questions about the schools and Tom's theories on the Dark Lord's plans for December. He didn't particularly feel like another test of endurance or media circus, but he knew without broaching the subject that Tom would insist they put their whole effort into it.
Pansy and Draco made those conversations impossible, talking over each other the instant he stepped out of his room. He pieced together that Pansy wanted to talk about his hair and the Vivariums, and Draco wanted to discuss the Death Eater meeting featuring Hermione.
"Pans, no one cares," Draco eventually said. When Granger said... about his face—does that mean they know why he's wearing a mask?"
"Do you know?" Harry asked.
"Back when—" He grimaced and paused on the stairs, eyes on Harry's guard. "When all this started, the inner circle- it was hard not to; it happened in front of us."
Pansy had gone entirely silent, staring at the blonde with her mouth open.
"Then he freaked out."
"When did it happen?" Harry pressed.
"Remember when I gave you a letter in my Common Room? Around then. Then end of April, just before Cassiopeia turned up. About four to five days after I kidnapped you, actually," There was a question in his tone that Harry ignored.
"Yeah, that was such a good time," he deadpanned instead. "So, you were all, what, in a meeting? And he…" He waved a hand at his face.
"Yeah. Most of them he Obliviated." Draco looked at Pansy as he spoke, then back to Harry, "My mother is already sworn to a Vow; I don't know the details, but she never speaks a word about his business to anyone. My aunt… I don't know what happened there. She wasn't Obliviated, as far as I know. She was in his ear for a few days, and then she was sent off. She was screeching like a banshee all the way to the ward edge."
They'd begun walking again. He could feel his entourage listening and hoped Draco knew what he was doing.
"And you? I mean…" Harry gestured at the Death Eaters and raised an eyebrow.
"That's the thing—" he glanced back at Pansy and frowned. "We should arrange to speak in private."
"Rude," she said, finally roused from her gossip-induced stupor.
"Nothing personal Pans. Dark Lord's orders."
"Yeah, always blah blah Dark Lord's orders lately," she muttered under her breath. Both Tom and Draco narrowed their eyes. She huffed and shook them off. "Oh, relax. I don't mean it. So, nice hair?"
The blonde grimaced while Harry pretended he hadn't heard anything a second time.
After all Pansy's hoping that they would find out what was inside the new Vivariums during the lesson, Rookwood did not mention them. Instead, they focused on ocean-dwelling animals, and he took the students on a long walk down to the shoreline to discuss Shrake, a gigantic fish with numerous spines and a mouth like a crocodile, apparently with a taste for fishing nets.
They didn't manage to see one, though Rookwood assured them they were there, and threw in a net to tempt them. In essence, the class was a long walk up and down the cliffside.
Potions was a similarly exciting experience, though instead of sitting alone he sat with Ruby and Pollux, the latter of which occasionally whispered to him loudly about the blood magic text he was reading. Harry found himself, on several occasions, frowning over his shoulder to look at the book without being directed. The third time he did this, Pollux put the book on the desktop between them, next to his cutting board.
After a free middle period, Potions was his last class of the day until the Dark Lord enacted the new and improved schedule—again. That night, he was going to Necromancy with Ginny, though he didn't feel like those classes would contribute to his N.E. .
The twins walked with him to the library annex after class, Ruby chattering endlessly, more so when they collected Reed the instant they walked through the doors. Ginny was waiting near the fountain, so he dragged his entourage over to her and into the library, where Tom had decided they'd spend most of the afternoon working on a backlog of assignments.
Tom had told him that if impressing Voldemort was something he wanted, they'd have to put in effort, which shocked Harry considerably. He aimed to take them for a run afterwards, and he was already exhausted at the thought of it.
'Can't we just go to bed? N.E. aren't that far away. We could focus on the assignments, have a shower, and work out in the morning?' he thought as he pushed one of the three doors open and chose a set of chairs.
'There is also a duelling competition to think about well before then. That he intends you to win. Would you like me to tell you how they train at Mahoutokoro? At Koldovstoretz? Durmstrang? Jaadoo Seekhana? Our magic is strong, but we cannot rely wholly on that. You have a lot to learn.'
'Yeah, but can't you just fight for me?'
'It would be nice if we could use our consciousness, magic, and body in a unified and graceful manner. You trip me over for a start.'
'…Okay, fine.'
"Is this about Pansy?" Ginny asked, taking books from her bag.
Pollux dropped his blood magic text on the table and sat down. Ruby and Reed had a seemingly one-sided conversation while they took out their own books, during which Ruby power-mouthed, and Reed said nothing aloud.
"Is… What about Pansy?" Harry asked, bewildered and trying to remember if he'd said anything about her as they entered.
"Er- this?" She gestured at his head and then said, "You… Smell really good, too." She was awkward as she said it, drawing the attention of everyone but Pollux, who said:
"I should ask mother what role blood type plays. This book only mentions that there is a difference…"
"What do you mean?" Harry asked Ginny, though he had a good idea.
"Well, she's not not pretty?"
"Oh, No. No. I'm not—this isn't about Pansy; this is a media-related thing," he started haphazardly pulling texts and scrolls from his bag to hide his face.
"Media?"
"Yeah, there's something going on in December. I don't know if I can tell you yet, really. I have Skeeter tomorrow, too."
"Oh, Merlin, I preferred to forget about it. Do you need me to come with you? Will they let me?"
"It's okay, Gin, I doubt it. It sucks, but it's just Skeeter. It'll be fine."
Ultimately, he didn't manage to get to the grounds like Tom wanted. The mark burned around twenty minutes after Eris and Avalon found them in the library.
Harry was hit with a thunderclap of anxiety, nervously jamming all his study back into his bag while Ginny questioned him.
"Uhh, I—the mark," he muttered, standing. "I'll catch up with you later?"
He didn't wait for them to answer. He collected his Death Eaters and left the library, realising that he hadn't been told where to go. As the doors closed behind him, he took out the map and found the Dark Lord nearly instantly in his office.
There was no fast way to the faculty tower from the library. Either he went down to the dungeons to get the grand staircase from there, or through the transfiguration courtyard to the multiple staircases in the defence and Gryffindor towers.
He opted for the dungeons and stairs purely because he'd prefer to run into Slytherins.
His heart made his feet move faster, as though they were trying to match pace. The irrational thought that the Dark Lord might figure out his plan because he smelled nice and his hair wasn't a disaster kept popping into his mind as he impatiently moved through the dungeon, then through the viaduct entrance hall—thankfully not needing to go through the courtyard proper—across the rope bridge with the steep drop into the water, and while he maneuvered the stairs. Each time, the thought was pushed down by an increasingly exasperated Tom.
Again, he didn't need to speak the password to the eagle. It rotated out of the way nearly the second he stepped in front of it. He would have preferred a moment to catch his breath, to deal with how red his face felt. Tom walked them up the winding stairs anyway, leaving their guard at the bottom.
Nagini was missing; only the Dark Lord was in the room, fully concealed. He didn't tell Harry to sit. Instead, he stood and gestured for him to turn around and walk back out the way he came.
Harry was confused but did as he was told, descending the stairs without a word and re-entering the corridor, Voldemort right behind him.
They were followed toward the grand stairs by ten Death Eaters, all masked and hooded, wands ready.
"In your interview tomorrow, you will vaguely mention December. Do not outright say anything. Do you understand?" The Dark Lord asked in Parseltongue.
The students they encountered on the moving stairs did everything humanly possible to get out of their way.
"Okay," Harry said after he'd swallowed three times.
At one point, three second-year Gryffindors got trapped on a set with them, moving between platforms. The two girls began crying immediately, the boy not far behind, begging for their lives while Harry was caught somewhere between laughter and sympathy, his lips wiggling either to smirk or say something.
The stairs seemed to move far slower while the students caught with them made shrill noises that drew the attention of everyone else on the stairs, a decent number of them in the pre-dinner hour.
"No one's going to kill you," Harry said when his humour and sympathy were outweighed by annoyance.
His words made them cry harder. He rolled his eyes and threw his hands up, muttering under his breath, "Maybe I'll do it."
When the stairs finally connected to solid ground, the Gryffindors had to be removed with force from the railings, hanging onto them with a death grip and still sobbing. Once they'd been removed by the Death Eaters, some of them sniggered as they gently plopped the weeping pile of students on the unmoving platform.
"I hate these stairs," Harry said as he passed them, walking faster to compensate for lost time and to soothe his annoyance, an idea that the Dark Lord seemed to share.
"You will keep Wednesday and Thursday evening free this week. On Friday, you have an appointment with Saint Mungo's." The Dark Lord continued as though there had been no interruption, but Harry recognised the irritation in his tone.
"Yes." He wanted to mention that he had Necromancy with Ginny both that night and on Wednesday, but Tom held his tongue.
'Do I thank him?' Harry wondered.
'No.'
Voldemort took them out through the entrance hall doors. The students in their path scrambled away, whispering and gasping in their wake. A few of them froze in fear; one Hufflepuff girl, in particular, froze directly in their way, so they needed to walk around her, shaking in the quad courtyard pathway.
Once outside the wards, he took Harry's arm without any preamble and side-along Apparating him to the Malfoy Manor. From the outside, he could tell the mansion was buzzing with activity: light spilling from every window as night fell, shadows moving in every room he could see, the front doors wide open with an extensive guard standing on either side.
The ten Death Eaters who had followed them through the school appeared quickly after them with a nearly unanimous crack. As they walked up the gravel path, his followers unmasked and began talking to each other, bizarrely casual discussions about wives, husbands, work, kids, and dinner parties interspersed with talk of war.
They broke off as they entered, separating into smaller groups and dispersing into the manor as the Dark Lord took the stairs up to the sitting room that Harry had only seen inside Voldemort's head.
Nagini was in her serpent form and draped on an armchair, awoken when they entered. The Dark Lord knelt for her to climb atop his shoulders, and Harry wondered how he always made it look easy. She was large enough to digest at least one and a half men and had easily pinned Harry to the ground with her weight.
"Hello, Harry," she said, winding herself around Voldemort's chest and shoulders.
The Dark Lord removed his gloves and took a thin, blue, hinged box from a small chest of drawers beside the chair, which Harry recognised. The Portkey to Nurmengard. When Voldemort did, Harry put his finger on the key without direction, reappearing in the familiar forest surrounding the castle after a sickening, spinning transportation. It was colder and darker than the Malfoy Manor.
The prison was wrapped in a thick fog, invisible. He could see a few feet in front of him when Voldemort summoned a ball of light, hovering it above them as they moved. It cast an eerie silver glow, making Harry feel as though they were about to be attacked by a werewolf.
He was jumpy as they climbed the seemingly endless stairs, paying extra attention to avoid falling into the mist.
He only had one guess as to why they would be at Nurmengard. He figured he was safe in assuming the castle had been restored to its original purpose. And if that was the case, they were here to see prisoners.
There were a handful of masked Death Eaters in the small entrance courtyard and slightly more in the main foyer. Some attempted to follow them as they climbed the main spiral staircase, but the Dark Lord stopped them.
Harry noticed his hands were shaking slightly, that his legs were unreliable, his grip on the rail tight as he followed.
They moved down a short hallway, and the Dark Lord stopped them outside a heavy wooden door with an enormous pock-marked steel lock. It opened to his touch, and he pushed it open, gesturing for Harry to enter first. He did, clenching his hands into fists and forcing air into his lungs, hyper-aware that it smelled like cedar.
A quiet sobbing came from within, one he instantly recognised as belonging to Hagrid.
As far as Harry knew, he might not have even known Dumbledore was dead for certain. Everything that had transpired since could be news to him. Even his appearance would be a shock, never mind his apparent loyalty to Voldemort.
As he slowly entered, he realised that there was more than one prisoner. Four barred cells were within, a walkway down the centre. He quickly saw that three of them were occupied.
Voldemort stopped and leaned against the cell containing the groundskeeper, content to watch Harry take the room in silently.
The cell next to Hagrid contained McGonagall, watching him with wide, betrayed eyes.
"Harry?" Hagrid finally noticed him. " I thought you were—this can't be—" He returned to weeping.
Charlie Weasley was in the cell behind him, feeling like a test, chained to the wall by his wrists—where the others were free to move within their bars.
'What does that mean? Why did he do this? I don't know what to do. What do I do?'
'Do what you want to, Harry.'
His stomach leapt at Tom's tone, and he examined his thoughts. Confusion gave way to several other emotions, not one of them guilt or shame, as he'd expected.
Instead, he thought of Tom's memory of McGonagall, Hagrid, and Dumbledore leaving him on the doorstep of Privet Drive. Minerva telling the headmaster that they were leaving him with the worst sort of people, though no one moved to stop it. He thought of Tom, begging to stay at Hogwarts. He thought about the orphanage and Dumbledore's immediate disdain for the young Riddle, a dislike shared by McGonagall. The manipulation that followed, both he and Voldemort subjected to it the instant Albus Dumbledore got a whiff of their existence and decided that he should play master of fate.
"What was the difference between me and him?" Harry finally spat, mostly directed at McGonagall.
The Dark Lord also silenced Charlie, who had started swearing and fighting against his restraints when he registered their arrival.
"What do you mean, Potter?"
Voldemort silenced Hagrid next, his soft sobbing becoming wails.
"I mean me and him," he pointed, andhis stomach felt like he'd swallowed batteries.
"…Isn't it obvious? He's a murderer. A heart full of darkness and hate from the moment he was born. He cares for nothing but power and control." She looked at him as though he was a stranger.
Nagini hissed angry nonsense and attempted to remove herself from the Dark Lord's shoulders, but he stopped her with a Parseltongue command. He didn't take his eyes off Harry, the only part of his face he could see.
Several thoughts ran through his head, and he struggled not to say them at once, his slowly boiling rage making it difficult.
"From the moment he was born?" Harry eventually said. "You think he was born this way? I never thought you were stupid." He fought not to say anything he shouldn't, Tom waiting to catch words as he grappled with his emotions.
"Let me ask you something else." He looked her over and saw that she was clean and that her cell was tidy.
She had a mattress on the steel frame jutting from the stone, a privacy half-wall for the toilet and shower, and a built-in metal table and chair. She seemed well-fed.
"Has he hurt you?" He already knew the answer, so he pressed on, "The student who came to Hogwarts—almost right up until he left, he never did anything without a reason. Without being pushed. You created him, along with Dumbledore and the rest of them. And you made me. I'm a murderer. I'll do it again. My heart was filled with hate and darkness the day Albus Dumbledore manipulated the Dark Lord Voldemort into killing my parents. Into trying to kill me. You're wrong about one thing, though. We care about a little bit more than power and control. Right, Nagini?"
She did descend from Voldemort's shoulders then. She contorted on the floor, black lace spilling free with her human form.
"You- what? That's not- you'll do it again?"
"You don't know a proper thing," Nagini said, standing beside Harry and jabbing her fingers at the bars as though they were her fangs.
"Albus didn't want this for you-"
"He wanted me to die!"
Tom snapped his mouth shut and redirected his fury at Charlie, who was red in the face as he struggled against his chains. Harry couldn't tell if his rage came from the fact that it could have all gone differently, that they had been manipulated, or because there was no difference between himself and the Dark Lord, or that he was what the people he once loved feared most. What he had once feared most. All of it, he decided.
'Do what you want to do,' Tom repeated, more of a command the second time around.
Harry stepped closer to his bars, and the Dark Lord dropped the silencing spell.
Charlie spewed gibberish at that point, fury and fear turning his words into unintelligible soup.
"Let me show you what happens when you mean it," Harry said, putting his hand through the bars and casting a wordless Cruciatus.
"No! Stop! Harry, you must sto-"
He didn't turn to discover why McGonagall had fallen quiet; he assumed she'd been silenced. He was intently focused on Charlie, watching him as though in a trance.
He didn't cry out; gargled instead, his teeth bared and clenched as he choked on blood, foaming red spit spilling down the side of his face. His eyes—rolled so that only the whites were visible, were bleeding—along with his nose and ears. His skin was a deep shade of scarlet, every vein bulging as he seized. He heard bones break—wet snaps as Charlie's muscles and Harry's magic worked to fracture them.
He didn't relent until the Weasley had turned blue. He spat several teeth and vomited a considerable amount of blood, after which he began to wail, a horrific, nearly inhuman siren-like sound that finally snapped Harry out of his haze and sent him stumbling away from the cell.
He registered that he was torturing Ginny's brother. Ron's brother. Whose only crime had been to be rightfully angry at him for his death. In return, Harry had nearly killed him with his overpowered magic in potentially the most painful way possible.
"Fuck." He looked at his hands, then at Voldemort. "Get him a healer. Lydia. Please. I don't- I can't- not him. Please."
Nagini took his wrist and shushed him, detecting his panic attack before he did. Her cold magic seeped into his skin and brain, drowning his thoughts.
The Dark Lord drew up his sleeve and pressed his wand to the mark. Then he passed Harry, expressionless as far as he could see. He unlocked and stepped into Charlie's cell to begin casting over him, his wand still drawn.
Harry watched, head empty, as he rolled the Weasley onto his back after clearing his mouth of the remaining shards of teeth with magic. He'd lost consciousness, sweating profusely, pale like a corpse, nose and ears still bleeding.
McGonagall and Hagrid weren't conscious either, which he would have been grateful for, if he could think under the heavy dose of Nagini's influence.