Fall, Dotan
Come out while the rain is gone
Slow down, breathe in on your own
And the world keeps spinning around while we dive in it
And the world is bringing us down leaving marks on our skin
Cold wind beneath our wings
Breezing out 'till we let it in
Don't we all fall? Don't we all fall?
Chasing lights of the dying limbs
Change won't come if we don't begin
Don't we all fall? Don't we all fall?
Don't we all fall?
Stone cold by the silver sea
Ripped out of this make-believe
And we all keep travelling 'till the lights kick in
While we all keep climbing the walls chasing marks on our skin
He'd turned away from the entire group and started walking before Cassiopeia could tell him anything about where he was going; the gathered, muttering crowd—those that hadn't immediately run screaming from the library annex—was stressing him out, their eyes like daggers, making him sweat like he was under a spotlight.
Ginny and Cassiopeia followed him, correcting his course away from the central hall and towards the transfiguration courtyard.
"Faculty tower," she said as she steered him.
Ginny gnawed her thumb beside him as they walked at the centre of Harry's guard.
They saw Luna and Neville in the Gryffindor tower as they passed through. Luna tentatively waved at him from the faded red chaise they occupied. Neville fixed his eyes on the instruments that played themselves, tapping his foot out of beat and pretending he hadn't seen them.
"…Harry?" Ginny asked, holding his sleeve and stopping him in the corridor leading to the faculty tower.
"Ginny… I don't- isn't this for later? I understand this is- but I can't- What? What is it?"
"Are you okay?" She whispered.
Cassiopeia had stopped a few feet away, examining her nails. It was a false courtesy; he knew she could hear them.
"I mean, no, not really. Not usually. But I know you don't mean it like that," he sighed and looked down the length of the hallway, empty apart from his guard and the vampire. "I've… Changed. If you're asking me if I'm alright with that… Yeah, mostly. I'm sorry. I am okay."
"Hermione, what you did… Was it Tom? Who put it in her-"
He shook his head, and she clicked her teeth shut.
"You did it?"
"Yeah, Gin."
"And… You're fine with that?"
"I don't feel bad about it. I'd do it again. She… I tried not to, so many times I didn't hurt her, even though I wanted to, we both did. We didn't, for your sake and hers, but... She used those kids. The shackles were her idea. I was done holding it in. I think I might be done keeping any of it in. If that's too much for you, I've already said I get it. I can't undo it."
She exhaled sharply, not meeting his eyes for a moment. "You feel like Hermione earned it?"
"It's more than that, Ginny. I wanted her to earn it. I have for… Ages. Since she started tracking me, I've wanted her to…" He swallowed and didn't finish, always afraid to let her see this part of him.
Hiding it from her made him feel guiltier than anything else. He didn't want her following him, thinking he was still whoever he'd been. He told her as much.
"I'm not who I was anymore."
"Trust me, Harry, I know." She turned to keep walking, and Cassiopeia stopped looking at her hands, a tiny smile on her face as she shooed Harry along the corridor.
"…And are you okay with it? Really?" He asked as she walked, apparently leading the way.
She stopped once more and narrowed her eyes at the Death Eaters, then at Cassiopeia, brazenly standing next to Harry, dropping all pretences of not listening.
"Can you… Give us some wards?" Ginny asked, and Cassiopeia huffed, stepping back and drawing her wand.
Once they were silenced, Ginny took her thumb from her mouth, having chewed it the whole way. "In my first year—" She cleared her throat and started again. "In my first year, I loved that diary." Her voice shook, and she looked at the ceiling.
"Before it started influencing me, I would tell it things. And it would tell me things, telling me that I was- that I was better than them. More powerful. Than everyone. That if I let him help me, that if I helped him, I could be great." She let out a nervous laugh and continued to avoid his eyes.
'Sounds like something you'd say,' he thought, ignored.
"Merlin, Harry, I wanted it. I wanted to do whatever he told me to do. It scared me. I was almost relieved when it turned out to be too good to be true because I was so tempted."
He had never heard her talk about the diary like that. Tom was fascinated, Harry had to school his face multiple times so he didn't grin inappropriately.
"So. Yeah. I'm… Alright, with who you are. I'm afraid of how okay I am sometimes. Most times. But when Pollux said that I should stay on my path, Harry, I don't think he just meant Eris and Avalon. I think he meant you, too. I'm with you."
"It is true. What the diary told you," Tom said. Harry wanted to hug her but had no idea if it was the right moment.
"Yeah, then he tried to make me kill people," she muttered.
"It was a different time," Tom said. Her eyebrows wiggled higher on her face.
Her confession had sidelined him. He knew that she wanted to learn necromancy despite it being considered dark. He'd assumed it was because she'd been born with an affinity, something she couldn't change. Her support of him had continued to baffle him, more so as time passed. Now, he wondered if it was less surprising than he first thought.
Cassiopeia dropped the wards regardless of whether they were ready, tapping her wrist, where there was no watch. "How is it we're going to be late when we left so fucking early?"
Ginny laughed, a small shocked giggle.
The vampire led them to what looked to be an unused office, with cobwebs coating the paintings and furniture. She waved her wand and cleared the room, then sat behind the desk. "Good, it looks like we've been waiting here for ages." She gestured for them to sit down on the leather two-seater couch.
'Why haven't you told me it's crazy? Why aren't you telling me to stop?' Harry thought as soon as there was quiet. There was a twinge of desperation as his idea took on a serious edge, as he began to recognise that he couldn't stop thinking about it.
'Do you truly want my comment? Right now?'
Harry winced and shook his head fractionally. The door swung outward, blessedly redirecting his thoughts.
Percy entered with a too-tall hat on his head and a serious look on his face. Two Death Eaters escorted him, and he sat down in a wooden chair—the only one left. He had a large notebook on his lap, and he opened it as the Dark Lord's followers took their leave.
Cassiopeia raised one eyebrow at Harry, then began to ward the room.
Ginny was fidgeting next to him, one hand deconstructing the hem of her robe, the other deconstructing his, her nails searching for threads to pull free as Percy looked through his notes.
"I told Mother I was coming. I thought about not informing her, but she would likely attempt another method to contact you, given the circumstances," he sighed like the meeting was already the longest of his life. "So, she has questions regarding your well-being." He glanced at Cassiopeia, and she grinned, baring her fangs and leaning across the desk.
"Is she a prisoner?" He asked her.
"She is certainly not free to go, so if you want to call her that, you're more than welcome."
Harry looked at Ginny, and she seemed unsurprised, focused on not meeting her brother's eyes.
"Have you been harmed?" Percy continued, literally ticking items off a list with a small, spotted quill.
She didn't look at him when she answered, "No, I'm okay. I'm fine."
"And… Ron?"
The silence was heavy, and Harry tore his eyes away from the older Weasley, choosing Cassiopeia instead. She was already staring at him.
"I- what's the question, Percy?"
"What happened to him?"
"He died in the Ministry. In June. Last year." She recited it mechanically.
Percy sighed, nodded, and wrote something down. "And you, what is the term? Reanimated? Him, then?"
"…Yeah."
"Okay. And you don't know who killed him?"
"No."
"Potter. Are you a prisoner?"
"No. Not really," he answered before Cassiopeia could stop him. She seemed to want to, then narrowed her eyes and sat back, watching Percy.
"Have you been harmed?"
"Loads. No one's tried to kill me in nearly two weeks, though. I was just kidnapped, but that wasn't Voldemort." He tucked his hand in his robe pocket.
"He's fine," Cassiopeia said, then in French, "Nagini a dit que tu avais un endroit où tu pouvais cacher des choses dans ton esprit. Est-ce que c'est vrai?"
Harry squinted at her, and Tom said, "Je peux."
'What does she want? What is she saying?' He was ignored, so his squint became a glare.
"Quoi qu'il se soit passé la nuit dernière, vos deux cœurs ont battu la chamade quand la porte s'est ouverte. Vous voyez ce que je veux dire?" She continued despite his face.
"Is this the right time?" He asked, and then Tom said, "Yes."
"Knock it off," Harry insisted.
"It appears to me then that you're both here of your own free will?" Percy asked, breezing past the weirdness.
Neither of them answered straight away. Cassiopeia smiled and opened her jaw wide. Percy finally looked at her properly and flinched.
"And you're their… Guardian?" He asked her.
She laughed until she coughed. "Sure."
"I saw you in the prophet with them. Who are you to the Dark Lord?"
She didn't answer; instead, she leaned across the desk, steepling her fingers, her face blank but her eyes blazing.
Percy leaned in, too, his expression going slack.
"Cassiopeia," Tom said, sounding bored.
She sat back and grinned, "Look at his stupid hat, though. Seriously. Far too tall for his head."
'What happened?' Harry wondered.
'She was glamoring him.'
'Glamoring?'
'A form of suggestive mind magic. Vampiric. Not as powerful as the Imperius, but Percy seems particularly susceptible.'
Percy shook himself and looked surprised to see Harry and Ginny before he seemed to remember where he was.
"Charlie?" When he recovered, his tone was conversational, slightly bored. He didn't mention the other hostages.
"Not dead," Harry said right when Tom tried to stop him.
"Oh?" Cassiopeia said. "Interesting."
"You sound sure?" Ginny whispered.
"He's not dead," He repeated.
"Have you seen him?" She pressed, louder.
"No, but… I asked." He looked at Cassiopeia, who was grinning manically. He frowned in response and let the topic go.
"Are you employed at the Ministry?" Tom asked Percy.
"No. He has complete control. Even the Unspeakables… My ties to the Order made things…" He gave Harry a pointed glance.
He looked at Cassiopeia. She raised one brow, then the other, still smiling.
'Is he angling for a Dark Mark?' He wondered, positive he'd guessed the vibe wrong.
'He is.'
Harry turned to Ginny to find that the subtext seemed lost in her.
"Would you show me your left arm, Ginevra?" Percy asked, and she squawked, offence plain on her face.
"There's nothing there," she spat.
"Then there should be nothing to see." While talking to his sister, he looked at Harry's right arm, his hand still hidden in his pocket.
She glared, pulled her sleeve up, and then jammed it back down almost immediately. Percy would have had to see it with his peripheral vision because his eyes were still on Harry.
Tom smirked and took Harry's hand out of his pocket, the top of his hand face down to hide the burn, before he slid his robe sleeve up, eyes glued to the mark as it appeared.
"When?" Percy asked. Cassiopeia cleared her throat, but Tom ignored her.
"The night of the Wizengamot trial."
"Why?" Percy asked, his voice finally betraying an emotion. If Harry had to guess, he'd say desperation.
"I… Didn't get a choice, but—" He stopped to look at Ginny and continued, "I'm not… I don't feel ba—I'm fine with it."
His sentence changed multiple times before and as he spoke. Tom examined everything he'd nearly said while his face reddened.
Cassiopeia laughed softly and pretended to be interested in the desk's surface. Harry tucked the mark away and put his hand back in his pocket.
"Alright," Percy said, a small frown between his eyebrows. "Keep well, Ginevra." He stood up and nodded stiffly before he swept out of the room.
"What the fuck, ha!" Cassiopeia cackled when the door closed. "What a weird dude. Ginny?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he's always been weird. Harry… Do you think, I mean, he was more interested in… Well, not me?"
Tom looked at Cassiopeia, and she shrugged. "Not my circus."
"We think he wants to- maybe uh-"
"He wants to join You-Know-Who." Ginny finished.
Cassiopeia laughed. "Sorry. You-Know-Who," she made air quotes with her fingers and giggled again. "He Who Must Not Be Named. Oooo!" She waved her hands.
She shrugged at Tom's face, "What? That's so fucking funny to me you have no idea. Yeah, looks like he wants a Dark Mark in any case. Your thoughts?"
"He is ambitious. When the Dark Lord returned, Percy was more than happy to side with the Ministry in saying that it was not true—that there was nothing to worry about—at the expense of his relationship with his family," Tom said. "His loyalty is to himself. So, he is useful."
Ginny shifted awkwardly beside him, "Merlin. I mean, that's all true. I still can't-" She shocked him by laughing humorlessly, almost manic.
Harry looked at the vampire.
"Alright, to the healer, both of you. Some draughts and some balm, aye?" She smirked and stood up, her words thankfully lost on Ginny, who had started hyperventilating instead of cackling.
He pulled her to her feet and wondered when he stopped carrying draughts in his pockets.
They drew a lot of attention as they made their way to the hospital wing, almost everyone leaving dinner simultaneously. His Death Eaters worked overtime to clear a path, more joining them as they passed. Ginny was a wreck, sobbing and apologising.
"I'm sorry, I don't- I don't know why I'm crying." She held his arm like she was caught in a tornado, and he shushed her.
"Don't apologise," he told her, glaring at the students who stood in their path—gawking.
Tom summoned the curse, ran it along the stones ahead of them, and found that it was far more effective than Death Eaters with drawn wands—something the students of Hogwarts were apparently becoming desensitised to. The darkness, though, had reached nearly legendary status among his peers. They knew to get out of the way.
Instead of scaring her, Ginny stopped uncontrollably sobbing and held more of her own weight at the sight of the curse. She sniffled instead, holding her chin higher though tears still streamed down her cheeks.
He held it until they reached the wing, speeding up the process considerably. He put Ginny in a bed, and Lydia was already bringing draughts. Once Ginny had uncorked and drank them, Cassiopeia pulled Harry and the healer to the side. He gave the Youngest Weasley an apologetic look, and she shrugged one shoulder, glassy-eyed.
Lydia was the one to cast privacy wards.
"We need some burn salve," the vampire said casually.
Harry's stomach flipped, and he bit his tongue.
"What for?" Lydia looked Harry up and down, frowning when she found nothing.
"Well, funny you should ask," she looked at Harry and grinned, letting the silence grow.
His heart was skipping beats by the time she finished her sentence:
"We've got that thing coming up. There's talks about… Well. He doesn't actually know yet," she jerked her head at Harry, who frowned.
"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"
"…So, a takeaway amount would probably be best. A good stockpile of salve, I'd say."
Lydia frowned, and Harry noticed she was chewing on something. "That's just one part," she picked at her teeth with her tongue as she spoke and noticed Harry looking, "Well-timed caramel." She pointed at her mouth. "Anyway, that's just one part. The salve is fine; there's also spellwork involved. Unless you don't mind him covered in scars?"
Harry raised his eyebrows and looked at Cassiopeia.
"Teach it to me, then?" She said.
"It, uh, took me a year to master. You could do it, in theory, but a very strange request considering I know how…" She looked between them suspiciously, then levitated three jars from a nearby shelf.
"…She is sworn to never speak about anything she sees outside the people it involves," Cassiopeia said.
Harry wanted to know why she seemed to think was going to be burned repeatedly in the near future, a thought that rolled his insides and made him readjust his stance, suddenly dizzy.
'Why does she think that?'
'I don't know.' Tom moved so that his back faced Ginny and presented his right hand, making Harry nauseous.
Lydia stared at it for a moment, then looked at Cassiopeia.
"That looks over a day old. Not dressed or cleaned at all? Does he have some sort of pain disorder? Do you register pain?" She directed her questions at him and the vampire.
They shrugged and she opened one of the floating jars, let it hover, lidless, while she cleaned his hand with magic, stinging but certainly not unpleasant.
Watching her clean it brought the idea to his mind again, his thoughts wandering as she layered salve on his hand and began the spellwork.
Tom swept his thoughts up as they came, showing no emotion as he expertly moved them away from Harry's mind's eye.
'Why aren't you telling me to stop?' He asked again.
'…Harry.'
'Tom. What- I can't- he knew what he was doing, right? He had to know.'
'Yes.'
'And you're not telling me this is crazy. Will you please tell me this is crazy?'
'This is crazy.'
'…Do you believe that?'
'Of course I do.'
Lydia finished her work and Harry turned to find Ginny thankfully asleep. He thanked Lydia, and she nodded, eying him as Cassiopeia led him back out of the hospital wing, recollecting his entourage at the doors.
"I think I'm going to make her fall madly in love with me," Cassiopeia said as they walked.
"What?"
"Lydia. I keep thinking, though, she's such a good healer." She looked at him, pursing her lips, squinting her black eyes, "There's a moral dilemma in a vampiric healer, I'm sure of it. Right? And I mean, obviously, if she's going to be madly in love with me, I need to turn her. Then there's the icky newborn stage. What if I feel like her mum? Though, Sarette definitely didn't feel like my mum. Maybe I put her in like, some sort of vampire daycare? Should we create vampire daycares? What if they do a bad job, though? I don't want to get an owl that says, 'Hey, we accidentally burned your spawn slash lover to an overdone crisp because the outer door was left unlocked by a delivery crew-'"
"….Cassiopeia," Tom said. "Where are you?"
She sighed, "I'm here. Right now. Shut up."
"You are catastrophising, and you should speak to her about this."
"I haven't even fucked her I can't ask her if she'd prefer to be raised in a daycare."
"…My point exactly," Tom said while Harry's eyes widened.
"Alright. I'll go and fuck her. You've convinced me," she shoved the salves she'd been carrying into his chest and turned on her heel to return the way they came. Harry stared after her, baffled.
On his way to his room, the halls were mostly clear. Only a few prefects and professors were walking the corridors and staircases. Curfew had just begun.
As soon as he was in his room, behind closed doors, the thoughts picked up in earnest, everything he'd pushed down throughout the day rushing him.
"We are in dangerous territory, Harry," Tom said in Parseltongue, his attention on the part of Harry's mind that they now both had to consciously work to conceal, an effort that he wasn't sure he even wanted to apply, his morbid curiosity always dancing close to outweighing his desire to hide information.
'You're still not telling me to stop. Why aren't you stopping me?' he thought.
"I can tell you that you will not like my reasons."
Harry considered what that could mean. At the same time he decided that he didn't really like his own reasons as he jammed them into the foreign part of his head.
"Look at you. Learning so fast," Tom said in English.
He took a deep breath before his next words, stuck on the tip of his tongue and bringing with them the desire to vomit on the beige carpet as he stood frozen in the centre of his room. "You don't make me say it, I don't make you say it, and we talk logistics?"
"…It will not be the same. I have no reason to hate you. He, on the other hand-"
"I know."
"You want to change his mind."
"I thought we agreed not to examine reasons, but I'm guessing yours is that plus something, something power. So… Logistics?" He said again.
"I did not agree not to examine the reasons. I do want you to be clear with me, Harry. You want to seduce the Dark Lord in order to, by your own thoughts, obtain a better position?"
"Ew, don't say it like that; what the fuck."
"Are you certain? Encouraging this, if it is what we think it is, will be—"
"I know. It's not like we're going to pet kittens." His heart was in his throat, making the serpent tongue difficult. Like Tom, he worked to shove all of his other reasons down with the rest of his forbidden thoughts.
"I do not think you fully grasp what you are asking for."
"But you're not telling me no?"
"I am not telling you no."