(TW: Crux being Crux. Sexual scene.)
Dark Matter, Les Friction
Don't stop, don't think, don't look back
You're a bolt of lightning in the sky now
Don't stop, don't think, don't look back
I've pulled you in; you better die now
I am dark matter
Your road to ruin
I am dark matter
I'm your undoing
Bring me your soul; bring me your hate
In my name you will create
Bring me your fear; bring me your pain
You will destroy in my name
When they'd appeared within Hogwarts, directly inside the Dark Lord's office, they startled Nagini into dropping a metal jug of water. It crashed to the stones and shot its contents toward the ceiling before the water hit the ground with a wet slap. Voldemort removed his mask with no true expression on his face—the ghost of a frown.
"Where have you been?" She hissed, clutching her chest.
The Dark Lord didn't answer with words, snatched her across the puddle, embraced her, kissed her head, and released her as just as quickly. She didn't stumble or startle, rolled her eyes and shook her head, half-smiling.
"Harry," she said, the grin spreading when she looked at him. Automatically contagious.
Voldemort cleared the water, and they spent the rest of the morning watching the Dark Lord work, an unending parade of letters, both written and opened.
Despite how tired he'd been, he hadn't been allowed to sleep, made to study while the morning became afternoon. Thereafter, he was brought to the lakeside to train—Nagini followed them out in human form, bundled up as though it were already snowing—his legs were sloppy and uncooperative even with Tom's assistance. Muscle repairs and Pepper-Ups before and after, not doing a great deal for the exhaustion.
The strict training regimen had undoubtedly changed his physique, stronger and faster than he'd ever been, his muscles defined in a way that made Tom linger too long in front of mirrors. Almost enough to make the perpetual exhaustion worth it.
With the sun's setting came the hope that they would at least sequester in the Dark Lord's office once more until he remembered it was Tuesday, and it was unlikely that Voldemort would let him skip Defence Against the Dark Arts. Unlikely that Cassiopeia would let him skip.
Throughout his enforced drills, he saw no less than nine Kom Ombo students, all of them stopping to watch at a distance before they moved on; no way to tell what they were thinking or doing, so he tried to ignore them.
The drama of Almadrasat Alsihria's arrival had died down in the castle, and Harry had largely missed it. Firmly separated from the rest of his cohort. He wondered when Har-im-hotep would try and approach them again, certain he would, certain he didn't want him to.
'You haven't told me the full story? About Har?' Harry thought, sitting down at the edge of the lake in silent refusal to continue.
The Dark Lord either hadn't noticed or didn't care as he wandered away along the lake, meandering and unlikely to go far. Nagini sat down beside him and seemed content to be in silence.
'Cassiopeia and I met him in Greece. She was relentless in her search for a vampire who would turn her despite the highly taboo and illegal nature of the thing at the time. Among vampires, the High Qovaris' word is the law. Before Enos, the High Qovaris was a woman—Esyllt Mattox. She was of the mind that no spawn would be turned without her direct permission. She was not known for giving her blessing. During her three-hundred-year reign, two vampires were turned legitimately. So naturally, when Cassiopeia met Har-im-hotep, he set about convincing her that permission would be granted by the High Qovaris if she only wished for it.'
'And you?' Harry thought, watching Voldemort stop and stare at the lake.
'Immortality was something we were both seeking. He found it amusing, and we were young.'
'…How old were you? Did Cassiopeia make a wish?'
'Sixteen. No. Everything fell apart, first. Sarette turned Cassiopeia illegally, and not long after that Enos killed Esyllt, a moot point in the end.'
'You were sixteen? What were you doing in Greece at sixteen? You didn't make a deal with him because…?' Harry's rapid-fire questions were, as usual, spurred on by real, honest answers.
Starved for any details Tom might give.
'Up to no good after illegally removing or Ministry-appointed Trace charms. By then, Harry, I had already created the first Horcrux. I was searching for definitive proof more could be made. To see how far I could take the magic. Greece was the birthplace of Horcrux creation, though Herpo the foul only created one. I was too far gone to make a deal with Har-im-hotep. He baited me toward a different path, and I resisted. Already in motion.'
"He doesn't know, does he? That I said… About the prophecy?" Nagini asked, interrupting his internal conversation.
"No," Tom said, eyes on the Dark Lord.
She nodded quickly and sighed a puff of steam, rubbing her mittened hands together, "What happened?" She asked, because it was obvious something had—all over his face in bright red.
Harry shrugged anyway, frowning. He shrugged a second time when she raised an eyebrow. He could see her making the assumption, so he looked away.
The sky was peach pink when they returned to the castle, the temperature swiftly dropping with the sun.
"…Tired," Harry repeated, the Dark Lord's ears typically deaf.
'What did Crux say?' He wondered, 'About the dream?'
'He is resistant to giving particulars. He wants Voldemort restrained, but not gagged, on his signal. As far as I can surmise, he wants to humiliate him. Standard by this point. I have my concerns about the location.'
'…Yeah, me too. Why are you worried, though?' It was warmer in the castle, his muscles releasing the tension the cold had brought—in spite of how warm Bed Sheet was. He didn't think snow was that far off.
His mind had wandered to the unpleasantness of duelling in the snow for the international competition when Tom finally answered.
'He is wildly unpredictable. I do not think that room will help.'
Harry didn't bother thinking aloud that their reasons were the same; knew that Tom already knew what he thought.
By nightfall, Harry walked himself to the grounds where Cassiopeia had her students prepare to decimate each other. He was alone, almost relieved to be told out of the Dark Lord's office without being followed.
Voldemort's presence was fast becoming heavy, impossible not to react viscerally. It would take anyone with two eyes and a functioning brain stem to see that Voldemort and the Boy Who Lived wanted nothing more than to shred each other's clothes.
A problem he had no choice but to file for later as he made his way from the faculty tower to the bell tower, out into the grounds proper. Watched by Death Eaters and the occasional wandering student, feeling like he was stark naked somehow. Thoughts fluttering back to where he didn't want to admit he'd rather be, shoving away the idea that maybe the Dark Lord would follow him to Cassiopeia anyway.
The vampire in question was smirking on the lawn; arms crossed, black silk dress whipping in the freezing air. "Limpet," she said when he stopped beside her.
He'd shrugged off the Lethifold, and he hovered next to Harry, humming like electricity in the shape of an empty cloak. He was given an incredibly wide berth.
Lydia was nowhere to be seen, the students already on the verge of fighting, splitting into pairs and discussing spells and strategies.
"Cassiopeia," Harry said when Tom said nothing.
Ginny hadn't joined Eris and Avalon—the two necromancers standing close, staring at Harry as they muttered to each other. He assumed they weren't talking about duelling. Though Avalon wore her Slytherin robes she'd heavily modified them, tight around the waist, the skirt far shorter than standard. Her dark legs were exposed to the near-winter chill in a way that told him she had to be using warming charms around the clock.
"…How are you?" Cassiopeia asked, her eyebrows rolling suggestively.
"Fine, without your intervention, thank you," Tom said. "What did he want with you this morning?"
"Oh, you want me to tell you stuff, do you?" She tsked, watching her students with narrowed eyes. "He didn't seem to want anything. He didn't say much at all. I tried to take him to talk to Har, he was less than lukewarm about the idea. Twitched the whole way, your Horcrux's doing. Like he's being punched from the inside of his head. He looked at Har's tent and turned around. Har wants to talk to you, by the way. One on one. Tonight." She'd stopped watching her students and started scrutinising him.
He'd flinched when she said 'Your Horcrux' though no one was close enough to hear them. "No. Not tonight. I'm serious, don't even start. You told Lydia that I'm his Horcr- and that he's…?"
She laughed, slapped him on the shoulder, almost hard enough to stumble him, "I can only postpone a fucking Djinn for so long. So it happened then? You and him? Did the nasty?"
"Cassiopeia."
"Tom," she snorted.
"I don't believe we need your assistance any longer," Tom said, glaring at her.
Harry still didn't know what exactly she'd done, just that Tom's rage about it hadn't settled.
"You wish. You need a haircut."
"I am serious."
"So am I? You need my help and a haircut." She grabbed a strand of his hair and yanked it out of position. It refused to go back. "It happened, didn't it?" She was on the verge of yelling about it.
She picked up Harry's wrist and bit him in one smooth motion, and when she let go—blood on her mouth—she said, "Not—a—virgin." And squealed. Tom tackled her.
"-I had—more to say, jackass," she snarled, though she seemed about to laugh, threw him off with ease and tossed a few spells after him to boot.
Harry didn't much care in the moment what else she had to say, or even about what she'd done to infuriate Tom, a mystery to him. What he did care about was the fight that Cassiopeia always supplied, a wash for his brain and a balm for his focus. His wand in his hand, his magic cooperating, like a song he'd lost and found again.
Duelling the vampire gave him little room for other thoughts.
The Dark Lord healed the vampire bite and the handful of mild to severe wounds he'd sustained later that night outside the Room of Requirement. His hands lingered on Harry's wrist for too long and not long enough, his heart haywire in his chest every time he looked at Voldemort—concealed or not.
Nerves spitting electric at the prospect of dreaming in Godric's Hollow. Tired and wired.
His ears rang, and he couldn't look at the Dark Lord, guilt mingling with a strange curiosity that he didn't want to address.
Nagini was with them, already serpent before he opened the doors. She was no longer any form of insurance between Harry and Voldemort; he knew she would prevent nothing. A weak preventative to begin with, far too entwined with Voldemort for her presence to stop them from doing whatever they were possessed to do.
And Harry did feel possessed, as he watched the Dark Lord remove his outer robe and mask. His mouth filled with metallic saliva as he kicked his boots off and shrugged his robes off from underneath the Lethifold on his shoulders.
Nagini was already coiled in a pile on the Dark Lord's bed, watching.
"Cassiopeia?" Voldemort asked, Parseltongue, not turning to face him.
"She knows, if that's what you're asking," Harry said.
The Dark Lord made a 'hmm' noise, apparently not surprised. He gestured at Harry's bed, and his face said, 'All this complaining about being tired?' So he begrudgingly crossed the space and fell onto his mattress, making Bed Sheet wheeze on impact—apologising immediately, inspiring a scoff from Voldemort.
He was disappointed on several levels when the Dark Lord took to his bed instead of trying something. He wanted to delay the dream, and if he was honest, though he was tired, he was perpetually horny. He didn't bother with the silencing charm, both aware that he wouldn't really need it and too exhausted to really bother.
Contact quickly washed the thoughts away; the dark of the room—Voldemort extinguishing the lights—the warmth of the Lethifold, and the bliss of the connection put him down within a minute.
Crux was ready and waiting for them in their head, the formless space around them taking shape under Tom's control and Harry's Horcrux's demand.
A Light blue nursery, whole and in one piece, white carpet, a rug in the shape of a cartoon dragon. White, wispy curtains on the one window frame. A wooden rocking chair in the corner, well-worn with time. Coloured blocks scattered on the floor, stuffed animals. A crib painted cream with his name carved in cursive between two engraved stag horns. A mobile with three Hippogriffs circling above it.
The blue toy train on the shelf above the chair.
When Harry looked at it he was shoved by Crux, though he hadn't reached for it in any capacity.
"That's mine. This is all mine. Don't—touch—anything." He snarled it, spit flying from his sharp teeth, dark red eyes wild.
Harry put both hands up where his Horcrux could see them and shot Tom a look, one that was returned.
"There was an alphabet poster above my crib."
Tom obliged and summoned an off-white poster boasting letters of the alphabet. A for Acromantula. B for Blast-Ended Screwt.
"No, it was M for Manticore, not Mooncalf." Crux corrected, appearing genuinely mad about it.
"Anything else?" Tom asked, reaching for Harry seemingly subconsciously.
"…We had a cat. I nearly killed it the first time I flew on the broom Sirius gave to me. Did you kill my cat and my parents?"
Tom inhaled, yanked Harry close, and stepped in front of him before he answered, barely a whisper, "I don't recall a cat."
"You better not recall a fucking cat." Crux spat, stepping toward him. "It's showtime."
Tom shepherded Harry toward the mirror hung on the wall and then stepped into it, pulling him through as he went, into an identical room on the other side, where Tom promptly dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged and still holding Harry's hand.
He could see the other room, and Crux standing in the centre of it—his shoulders drawn tight together as he waited—barely moving.
"Can they see us in here?" Harry asked in a whisper, joining Tom on the floor and leaning into him purely because the opportunity had presented itself.
"No. They will not hear us either, although I am starting to think…"
"Think what?"
"Your Horcrux may be… Working things out. Here. In dreams. I feel him sometimes, reaching for control. The last dream… I don't give him magic here. Neither of them. Yet he burned Voldemort."
Harry exhaled because he didn't have anything to say. If it were possible to strangle the life out of an incorporeal shred of soul, he would have done it ten times over.
His thoughts were cut short by the bedroom door in the opposite room opening, a bizarrely calm moment where the Dark Lord and Harry's Horcrux simply blinked at each other, Voldemort's hand on the door handle, white-knuckled.
"You tried to get out, first, yeah?" Crux said. "You did, didn't you? Tried the front door?"
The Dark Lord didn't move or answer, eyes intense and locked on Crux.
"You did." His Horcrux decided. "Tried every window, too."
Voldemort glanced away from Crux for an instant, and took in the room rapidly, before he nonchalantly relaxed, leaning on the door frame and letting the handle go. "Your father died proud." He said, casually, as though they were chatting over tea, "He did not shy away from death."
Crux exhaled a long, humourless, hissing laugh. His hands clenched at his sides. His back was facing the mirror, so Harry had no idea what expression he wore. He could certainly feel his own, though, suddenly far keener to watch his Horcrux sweep the legs out from under Voldemort.
"Your mother pleaded for mercy. Begged for your life. Asked that I take her instead." His nonchalance continued, a lazy smile spreading.
"And you laughed," Crux said, tone matching Voldemort's, though his hands gave him away, vibrating. "I need you to remember that," he took a step forward, jagged like his whole body was rigid.
Voldemort watched him approach, did nothing to remove himself from the line of fire.
"Really, really remember it, Tom. Keep it in your head always, okay? I know you've not got much room left in your brain."
They were nose to nose, the Dark Lord straightening to use the few extra centimetres of height he had over Crux, glaring down at him. Almost predictably, he was abruptly yanked to the floor, straddled by Harry's Horcrux and doing next to nothing to prevent it—smirking throughout.
Tom bound him then, metal shackles springing from the floor to lock the Dark Lord down by the wrists and ankles. Harry glanced at him to find he was frowning deeply, eyes squinted nearly closed, white, pursed lips.
"I've been watching you think about nothing but where you're gonna stick your cock," Crux said, snapping Harry's attention back to the other room.
"How to get it in his mouth, wondering how you're gonna stop fucking him, how on earth you're gonna hold it together when your attention is needed elsewhere, pondering how you're even gonna look at him without that look on your face, that's the one, right there. Like a needy whore." Crux slapped Voldemort hard, cracking when it connected.
"Do what you came here to do," Voldemort said, flexing his jaw and laughing.
"You think you can tell me what to do because you loom over the disgraced 'Chosen One' like a horny shadow? Listen to me." Crux lifted him off the floor by the scruff of his shirt and once again pressed their faces together, "Listen—to—me. All you will ever be is a Catholic raised church-piano playing scrawny dandy orphan boy glaring at the scraps on his table, Tom Riddle. You're not Lord of anything."
Tom had buried his face in Harry's neck, mumbling whispers that he couldn't catch.
"Son to an ugly rapist slut and a vapid no-brained Muggle, half-blood, tsk, if only your followers truly knew, imagine… Kneeling for you. They're almost as pathetic as their king of nothing—"
A loud thud interrupted Crux's monologue, the result of a point-blank head-butt. Tom's whispering had grown loud enough to hear.
"…Am I redeemable because I feel remorse, or does that make it worse? When I came here, to Godric's Hollow to kill you, your family, I felt nothing. Nothing but the- I was no one by then, almost nothing left."
Harry inhaled sharply at his words and didn't have anything close to an answer.
The Dark Lord was laughing, sounded insane. Blood seeped into his eyes from the bridge of his nose, split by the head-butt. "I will destroy him. There will be less than a sliver left of your Boy Who Lived; I will have him as mad as you are."
Though it was a dream, Harry could feel his heart trying to beat free of his chest, Tom continuously muttering beside him, adrenaline beyond enough to wake him, though it didn't.
"I just fucking can't get enough of the way you tell yourself that with a boner that hurts. I adore the way you think you fucking know anything. Go on then, ruin him proper, let's see it?" Crux cackled, shrill, almost shrieking at the Dark Lord.
"If I regret, am I worthy? If I repent with this darkness in me, am I… Because I'd kill for you. I'd still kill for myself. And I can't- How can I be both and not a monster? With all the hallmarks of a ruthless animal? How can I possibly believe-" Tom was oblivious to what was going on outside their copy of the room, Harry decided. Caught in a loop.
"Uh, don't think about it? You're not a monster," he whispered, wrapping his arms tighter around Tom's middle and squeezing him close. "I feel like there's a time and place for it. But I can't really talk expertly on the topic of morality anymore," instead of making Tom feel better he choked a sob on Harry's neck, almost a laugh.
"My fault, too."
"I said don't think about it," he repeated.
Crux was still cackling in the Dark Lord's bewildered face, "Go fuck him. You know you want to; he's right next to you. You can feel like you're the boss. Even though you're not. I hear he thinks it's hot when you plead."
His Horcrux was popping the buttons off Voldemort's shirt, and Harry had to stop himself from sitting up to get a better view of his chest, the idea of a mark he wasn't allowed to see burning a hole in his head. He was so preoccupied with the scene on the floor that even when the blood that was pouring down the walls registered in his peripherals, it took him an additional five seconds to comprehend it.
"Are you… Are you making the walls bleed?" Harry asked.
Crux's side of the room darkened as clots the size of tennis balls rolled down the powder blue paint—blacking out the window and dimming the overhead light—hitting the floor with muffled wet thuds. Dripping from the ceiling, first like light rain, then sprays of it, shot through the spreading cracks that formed under the pressure.
"…No."
Crux was whispering in the Dark Lord's ear as they were soaked in crimson, licking his face between words, one hand digging slowly under his ribcage. "A caged bird stands on the grave of dreams, his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream, his wings are clipped, and his feet are tied…" He drove his arm into Voldemort's chest to the elbow, chuckling at the pained noises the Dark Lord made. "Go on, sweetheart, teach us all a lesson. Who's the biggest baddest Dark Lord? Is it you? IS—IT—YOU? Everything you've EVER—DONE—YOU—DID—BECAUSE—YOU'RE—TERRIFIED-"
The dream ended, forceful and abrupt, and Harry was woken by being yanked unceremoniously to the floor.
"Is it morning?" Was the first thing out of Harry's dumbed-down mouth, bliss destabilising his thoughts as consciousness returned. Bed Sheet took his cue to struggle out from underneath him, growling as he did.
"You are beneath me. You are not my equal; you are little more than a receptacle. Am I making myself clear?" Voldemort said in Parseltongue, baring his teeth and paradoxically sliding his knee between Harry's legs.
He giggled, "You are above me, right now." Technically true because he was pinned to the floor, "You're funny." He whined when the Dark Lord pressed his thigh into his cock, automatically trying to twist his hands free from the iron grip on his wrists, wanting his hands in Voldemort's hair.
"Am I making myself clear?" He whispered it close to Harry's ear, and he struggled again, wondering how it was that he couldn't get out from underneath him.
He decided, brain fogging as his mouth found the Dark Lord's neck, that it was a combination of the warm, radiating bliss and the fact that he didn't really, truly want to get free. "So clear," Harry whispered, delighting in the goosebumps under his tongue, "Wrong, but clear."
He whimpered when one wrist was released in favour of squeezing his neck. He didn't mind, a hand free to twist into the Dark Lord's hair, harder than necessary because he knew he should feel angry about the way he'd been spoken about and to, painfully hard and rocking his hips regardless.
Voldemort was looking down at him, almost close enough to touch with his tongue, no closer despite how Harry pulled on his hair. He struggled to inhale, air barely passing through his strangled throat. The Dark Lord pressed against him supplied the most delicious friction, gasping with each stuttering upward thrust.
"You are nothing to me," whispered in the serpent tongue, undermined entirely by the bliss that rendered him stupid and unshakable, opening his mouth when the Dark Lord's breath ghosted his face.
"You are only made remarkable in any sense by my virtue."
"Pft," Harry said, wheezing, bucking up so he was as close as he could get, still held frustratingly away from his face. "Just shut up and get—my—clothes—off."
Though the Dark Lord sneered he was quick to oblige, releasing Harry's throat to vanish his pants entirely, his shirt immediately after. Naked in the dark in nearly an instant. The curse was a knee-jerk reaction that turned his shocked giggle into a moan, his free hand loose from the Dark Lord's hair and scrambling with the buttons on his pants instead. Bursts of darkness bloomed from his skin, lighting the room in dull green bursts as small inky clouds grew and merged along his abdomen, arms, and legs.
The curse drew the light out of the Dark Lord, heat first, then brightness, red-gold drowning out the viridian glow. Voldemort ran his tongue along Harry's right forearm, red light streaming from his mouth to snake a jagged path along his Dark Mark. Harry felt his pants vanish from under his struggling free hand. He immediately transferred it to Voldemort's cock, moaning and writhing under him, his breath refusing to come to him automatically.
His hand wasn't allowed where it was for long, swatted away as the Dark Lord bit a trail up to his neck, cool magic between his legs as Voldemort positioned himself—the temperature difference between his mouth and his hand enough to overstimulate Harry, bliss and sharp, burning pain culminating at the centre of himself, coming out of his mouth as one continuous, starving sound. When he felt the Dark Lord's cock where he wanted it, he wrapped his legs around his waist and pulled him in, gasping in his ear as he locked his free arm around Voldemort's neck, a stranglehold from underneath. He rolled his hips, not tentative for long.
The Dark Lord was biting his neck, but it hardly muffled the sounds, louder the faster Harry rocked.
Tom laughed, mouth pressed to the side of Voldemort's head, "Would you fuck nothing like this?"
The Dark Lord tried to pull back, but Harry didn't let go, emotions that weren't his bubbling out from under the all-encompassing pleasure-pain.
"Only remarkable—by your virtue," it was probably difficult for Tom to talk through Harry's moaning. Rage-fuelled desire held him at the precipice and left him there, hips rocking rapidly and without rhythm, blind eyes staring at the ceiling. "The lies you—tell—yourself—get me off," Tom was tightening his grip around the Dark Lord's neck, driving his teeth deeper into Harry's throat, angry, muffled, disagreeing moans as Voldemort finally matched his pace.
When he came, Tom's name tumbled out of his mouth, sending both Harry and the Dark Lord rigid, his entire body lit with excruciating heat, intensifying the orgasm and then washing it out completely, darkness ripping out of his skin in response until all he was was agony.
(AN: This bitch finished university. After this chapter, I'm gonna get 10k words ahead of you again, and then we can probably expect daily updates. Crux recites a line from Caged Bird by Maya Angelou.)