A/N: This isn't an earth-shattering chapter, but it was necessary. I apologize for the long wait - I was working on a new HP fic commissioned by AngstySnake, entitled Curling Into a Ball and Other Coping Mechanisms. It features animagus transformations gone seriously wrong, which is similar to a species swap... right? The first chapter of that has been posted, so please check it out! I'm going to be working on both of these fics simultaneously, so updates are going to get spread out between the two.

Thank you to everyone for your patience!

Lyrics in this chapter are from Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994) and The Cranberries' "Zombie" (1994).

That night was marked by Harry's epic staring contest with the fish Voldemort released into the tank. It was about the length of Harry's forearm and coated in glittering silver scales; had large, empty eyes that didn't blink; and a mouth that opened and closed at regular intervals as if it were run by a clock.

"Luna said I wasn't a fish," Harry said to it when the office was dark. His voice was eerie in the quiet. "Because I'm smarter than you, and I can sing and you can't … but you don't get infested with wrackspurts."

The fish's only response was a silent glug as it breathed through gills similar to Harry's. Its fins fanned back and forth, back and forth, brushing water along its body in a way that reminded Harry of the way the fins on either side of his tail moved while he slept (if that was even the right word for whatever it was he did now). He could almost feel the fish nearby in the way the water brushed against his skin, and if he listened closely he could hear the soft scraping of sharp-edged fins against the currents and the slight change in water flow whenever the fish opened its mouth.

Merlin, had he spoken to Luna only two… three days ago?

Harry was so lonely and bored that he was talking to a fish. He'd do just about anything to see one of his friends and be able to talk to them. How had Luna not completely lost it, all alone in that cellar for a month?

"I think I'm supposed to eat you," he told the fish.

It did look kind of stupid, honestly.

He swam in a cramped oval around the periphery of the tank and watched the fish dart further down into the water, startled by Harry's movement. It settled there quickly, looking dully out into the dark office.

"I don't want to eat you," Harry said, consolingly.

The fish didn't even have the decency to look him in the eye.

"I'm not like those dolphins in the aquariums," Harry assured his new companion. "I think they must get fed little fish too, though I think the little fish are usually already dead…"

Glug.

"Right, that's probably not very reassuring to hear," Harry said. The fish was drifting below him across the tank, towards the fireplace outside. "But I'm not a dolphin or a… a whale, or something. I've never even tried sushi. It isn't like I'm suddenly going to want to eat raw fish, right? How would I even try to eat you? You've got scales everywhere."

The fish swam a little further away, and Harry had the strangest experience: trying to huff and being unable to.

"You're not even listening, are you?"

The fish meandered further, tail towards Harry.

"That's rather rude."

Glug.

Just to startle it into reacting to his presence, Harry swam across the tank and then twisted down to the bottom, where he chased the fish to the other side. He let it continue swimming away and settle itself in the middle of the tank towards the top, one of its beady eyes pointed in his direction. Harry lay at the bottom of the tank, putting his hands behind his head.

"Here I am, talking about eating you - which you know, involves you dying, so you'd think that would be rather interesting - and you can't even be bothered to listen to me." The mersong coming from his lips managed to sound annoyed.

Merlin, Harry really was losing it.

The fish eyed him for another moment before it turned and swished its little tail to move a bit further away.

"I am really hungry, you know," Harry told it. "I'd prefer steak and kidney pie, or treacle tart. Do you think if you're still alive in the morning, Voldemort will try to give me something else?"

The fish was utterly unhelpful. Despite Harry's confusion as to how he would go about eating the fish, if he even wanted to, he couldn't deny that he hadn't eaten in days and he currently only had one option available to him. It wouldn't be long before he was desperate enough to try.

Doing so would mean losing humanity, though, and Harry was just as desperate to cling to that as he was to eat.

"You're really testing me, here," Harry warned his companion. "I might have to name you. It's harder to kill things with names, isn't it?"

He thought for a moment, while the fish swam over to stare at an empty corner.

"Xeno?" Harry suggested, thinking of Luna's absent-minded father. "No, that's offensive to Mr. Lovegood. No offense to you - well, actually, you're probably too dumb to realize that was an insult… oh, never mind, it isn't as if you understand me anyway."

Harry gave the fish a few seconds to respond and prove him wrong (which it didn't, but he had been giving it the benefit of the doubt).

"Merlin. I'm going barmy."

Saying so out loud made it feel more real. Harry clenched his fists and screwed all four of his eyelids shut, trying to push down the wave of hysteria trying to bubble up.

A string of curses escaped his mouth, but the pressure inside still did not recede. It exploded outwards in a wordless yell and a fist smashed against the glass, which sent the fish darting to the far side of the tank near the tip of Harry's tail.

"I have to get out of here," Harry said, melodic voice drenched in audible despair.

The fish, now dubbed Bartholomew, survived the night.

"Aren't you hungry, Harry?" Voldemort asked that morning.

"Your face makes me nauseous," Harry spat.

Voldemort chuckled and went to his desk, where he successfully ignored Harry for the rest of the day.

Harry did not get any steak and kidney pie or treacle tart, and his stomach felt as if it were trying to eat itself. Exhausted from hunger and boredom, he drifted to sleep that night without talking to Bartholomew. It wasn't as much of a relief as it would have been as a human. The fish stayed in his field of view, tempting, and he could distantly feel the growling and crunching of his hollow stomach.

Harry woke up, and Bartholomew's name no longer protected him. His blood stained Harry's fingernails and his scales glittered like stars in the night, glinting as they drifted in the water.

Guilt gnawed at Harry even as his teeth shredded meat and crunched on delicate bones, easily tearing past the scales and skin. His pointed fingers kept the slippery body from squeezing or writhing out of his grip. He wished it tasted disgusting, but it didn't. It was smooth, tender, and creamy. The blood trickled into his gills so that he tasted it even in the water, even when the only thing remaining of the fish was a bony head; beady, empty eyes; and scales like silver snow in the water.

Voldemort made and received multiple floo calls and visitors the next day, day four of Harry's office internment. None of the strangers noticed Harry, even if he sung the Hogwart's school song at the top of his lungs, clumsily set to the tune of "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (it was one of the only tunes he could remember from his rather limited exposure to music, both muggle and magical).

Voldemort must have activated sound wards and some sort of notice-me-not spells over Harry's tank. They had to be one-way, as well, because Harry could see and hear the guests just fine. He didn't recognize any of them, but to the last, each was dressed in business-like finery and eager to say and do whatever it was Voldemort suggested.

They were not Death Eaters, Harry concluded, but ministry workers. Voldemort's hold on the magical government was evidently (depressingly) firm, and Harry was disgusted by the ready compliance of the many men and women he saw walk through the office door.

Harry tried to imperio Voldemort once the visitors had gone. Voldemort only chuckled and tutted, as if Harry's repeated attempts at escape and/or murder were endearing, and asked how the fish had tasted.

Harry waited until the next visitor came around, then shot Bartholomew's head from the gap at the top of his tank with impressive accuracy. The visitor, a man wearing pale blue robes that reminded Harry strongly of Lockheart, screamed quite shrilly when a gnawed-upon fish head smacked him in the arm.

The catapulted head seemed to shatter whatever notice-me-not charms Voldemort had erected, because when the man looked up, his eyes locked on Harry and he shouted again.

"Hi," Harry spat. Voldemort's rage pulsed in his scar with the force of a bomb, and he clutched his head just as the man fainted.

"You are testing my patience, Harry," Voldemort said, lisping with a hint of Parseltongue. He let Harry suffer with the pain in his scar while he vanished Bartholomew's remains, and then he turned his wand onto his guest.

"I am not ready for everyone to know of my victory just yet," he said softly. "So, Harry, you've put Lord Peasegood into quite the awkward position."

The man blinked, coming to slowly. He saw the wand aimed at him and instantly blanched.

"My lord," he said. "I apologize, please -"

Voldemort silenced him with a nonverbal spell. "Lord Peasegood has an heir who is of age and reported to be reasonably competent. It would be no loss to me if I were to have to deal with the son rather than the father. So, tell me, Harry: why should I not kill this man for your petulance?"

Harry gaped in dawning horror. Lord Peasegood had scrambled onto his knees and was, by all appearances, pleading for his life. He hadn't even tried to go for his wand.

The man didn't deserve to die because Harry had thrown out his dinner scraps, though.

"Just obliviate him then!" Harry shouted. "You don't have to murder him, you - "

Peasegood glanced at Harry and began shaking, clenching his hands over his ears.

"Ah, ah, parseltongue, Harry," Voldemort chided.

Harry gritted his teeth and looked at the moving snakes woven into the carpet. "Obliviate him! If you murder him, people will put two and two together and realize you did it, and that doesn't look very good when you're trying to consolidate your power in the Ministry."

"Ah, so you do possess some small amount of political acumen," Voldemort murmured. "Very well. Obliviate."

Peasegood's eyes lost focus while the spell went to work. Voldemort slashed his wand towards Harry's tank, reestablishing the wards, and when Peasegood regained his senses Voldemort helped him into a seat and tutted about his health.

Harry's scar didn't stop burning like a hot brand on his forehead until Voldemort left that night.

Another fish popped into the tank the next morning. Harry tore into it, not seeing the point in hesitating again, and only paused when the door to the office opened. He tossed the torn body away from himself (as if that would hide anything) and glared as Voldemort swept in.

"Good morning, Harry. My my, such savagery. What would your mother say about such horrendous table manners?"

"How dare you!" Harry screamed, slamming against the glass. Voldemort sat down at his desk, chuckling to himself, and ignored Harry's screamed curses and insults while he bent over a stack of letters.

Harry wore himself out, and angrily swept the now very-dead fish up and straight out of the tank with his tail. Voldemort idly vanished it and went back to his work, and Harry curled in the back of his tank to pretend he was anywhere else.

The next morning, Harry couldn't remember how many days he'd been in the office. He'd cried the night before, and his pearlized tears were lying on the bottom of the tank to prove it to Voldemort.

He didn't eat the fish when it popped into the tank. Sure enough, Voldemort appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, and Harry attempted a smug expression at not giving his captor another opening for a jibe.

"Your mother would want you to eat, Harry," Voldemort said smoothly, and left Harry to swear at him while he sat at his desk.

Harry didn't keep it going as long this time as he had the day before. The days were wearing on him, the boredom and the constant anxiety and fear, the restlessness of not being able to move more than a foot or two in any direction, the loneliness. He was running out of stamina. What was the point of insulting someone if they couldn't understand you? What was the point of showing them how angry you were when they only laughed?

A few hours into the day, while Voldemort was distracted with a floo call, Harry ate the fish. He did it quickly, determined to finish before Voldemort had a chance to see him eating, and swept the resulting scale confetti into the same corner of the tank as his tears. It wouldn't stay there, but it was as inconspicuous as Harry could make it.

He was tired and out of hope, but he wasn't finished.

When Voldemort stood from his floo call and went back to his desk, Harry lobbed the fish's head out of the tank and nailed Voldemort right between his shoulder blades.

Voldemort was furious.

The crucio made Harry's body convulse and twist and spasm in ways a human body wasn't even capable of. Water splashed wildly as Harry careened into the tank walls and slammed his tail up and down and side to side and clawed at his skin as if he could pull the curse out.

Don't scream, don't scream!

Harry groaned and his teeth cracked and he dimly found himself slamming head-first into a wall and kicking as if he could push through it and get away from the pain get away get away oh Merlin I can't get away please I -

Voldemort's laugh was high, and Harry twisted and writhed and clawed at the tank's edges, reason gone, but he didn't scream.

Not that time.

Voldemort collected Harry's tears into a phial and set them on display on his desk.

Don't fall asleep.

The silence was oppressive. Voldemort was reading by his fire, feet casually propped up on the armchair opposite. It had been like that for what felt like hours, ever since the Dark Lord had finished his torture session and put Harry's tears aside like a morbid trophy.

Look how awful I am, I keep literal tears on display at my public workplace, hurray, Harry thought blearily. He was still shaken by the occasional tremor leftover from the cruciatus and had given up another bit of his dignity to lay on the tank's floor, where the currents didn't move him so easily and he could stay relatively still.

He was never truly still. He never truly slept. It was maddening. All he wanted was the bliss of true unconsciousness, but even that was denied him now.

Don't fall asleep.

It was one more way he could defy Voldemort. Voldemort didn't seem aware that sirens couldn't sleep the same way humans did - always one eye open, always with fins rippling, always maintaining a groggy molasses-like awareness - and Harry wasn't going to hand over the knowledge on a silver platter.

It was stupid. It was petty.

It was the only thing keeping him from giving up entirely today.

Don't fall asleep.

"All I want for Christmas is you… you, baby…"

Harry didn't even like that song, but it was one of the only ones he knew enough to sing a few lines of without straining to think of lyrics.

It was dark in the office, and he'd already drifted in his half-lucid sleep for a while before coming awake with the overpowering need to fill the silence. It was a desperate, raw compulsion, and Harry was in no shape to say 'no' to his unstable mind. The silence and emptiness were too much to bear, so Harry had to fill it, and if that meant singing sappy popular Christmas hits three months too early, he would.

"I won't ask for much this Christmas, I won't even wish for snow… blah la la da dah da blah dah, blah blah all I'm asking for…"

Is to get out of this bloody tank.

Hysteria, the kind that had set him sobbing the previous night, almost overtook him again. He pushed it ruthlessly down, trying to think past the emotion. It wouldn't help.

Was that really the only song he knew?

There was that one that had kept playing on Dudley's radio over the summer a year or two ago, blasting out through the open window along with the sounds of Dudley's video games while Harry worked in the garden. Harry had sort of enjoyed that song, even if he'd had to listen to it underneath the artificial sounds of gunfire. It had been ironic in that context, he remembered.

How had it gone?

He hummed the first few notes, adjusting and re-humming until it sounded right and the lyrics started coming back in bits and pieces.

"Hmm hmm hm hmmm hm hmm hm, Child is slowly… taken. And the violence… hmmm hmm such silence… who are we mistaken? Hmm hm… it's not me… not my family, in your head, in your head they are fighting… with their tanks, and their bombs, and their guns, and their guns, in your head, in your head, they are crying. In you he-ead, in your he-ead. Zombie, Zombie… in your head, they are dying…"

"My Lord."

Harry had been staring emptily at the bookshelves across from his tank, reading the titles to himself for the umpteenth time, but at the sound of that drawl, he jolted to attention.

Snape was standing right there, just next to the fireplace, evidently having flooed into the office, and Harry's taxed mind jumped straight past reason and into fevered hatred. That man deserved to die.

"Snape," he sang, turning himself around in the tank to press his hands against the glass between them. "Severus Snape, traitor, betrayer, MURDERER."

Harry's voice was thick enough with magic to pluck like a string, taught with anger and inevitable like a hook. He felt it sink into Snape and dig and yank, and Snape slammed against the other side of the tank, mouth parted and eyes desperate. The man's fingers latched into the narrow gap at the top of the tank's wall and strained, white, as if he were trying to get in.

"How enticing the end," Snape whispered feverishly, eyes unnaturally wide and haunted in a way Harry had never seen. His voice was rapid, pleading, desperate. "Give me mercy; give me death!"

Harry's rage snapped and dissipated as quickly as it had come. He gaped at Snape – who was still clinging to the edge of the tank – until Voldemort's voice cut through the static in Harry's ears.

"Crucio."

There was no time to figure out what had happened. Pain slammed Harry's body against the wall of the tank, cracking his head against the glass and bending his dorsal fin sideways. The suddenness of it wrenched a scream from him before he could even form the resolution not to give Voldemort that satisfaction. The sound rent the water and the air above. Even Harry's magic-steeped voice couldn't make the sound pleasant, and he caught sight of Snape stumbling to the ground and Voldemort clenching his teeth before Harry's head slammed back again and he was seeing white.

His claws scraped bloody furrows in his own skin and he choked on the water he needed so desperately and his tail was beating madly against the confines of the tank. He was still screaming, and he couldn't get enough control of himself to stop now. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't. Stop stop get away stop STOP! But it didn't and Harry had nothing to focus on besides the oh Merlin it's going to kill me.

It wasn't ending, please, make it stop make it stop -

His mouth was open and mouthing the words and - don't beg don't beg don't beg - but he felt the sounds bursting in his chest and he couldn't keep it in.

"No! No! No!" Harry screamed. "NO, don't don't don't don't -"

He was sobbing, pearls getting tossed violently back and forth in the water around his head. So close don't beg so close don't beg -

He let out another curdling scream, and then it stopped, finally, and Harry instantly curled over his stomach, heaving in great gulps of water and feeling it burn his insides, tail trying to tie itself in knots. Pain shot up and down his spine like an electric current, making his muscles twitch and spasm and jerk. His fins were going wild, jerking outwards in tension before falling completely flat as the spasms and exhaustion took him in waves. He wasn't sure which way was up or down; if he was sinking or floating; because it all felt the same and by Merlin that hurt.

"I understand you have toyed with your voice around me without consequence thus far, Harry," Voldemort was saying. "You cannot do me any harm, and so I allowed it. Understand now that this is not the case for others. Any attempt to enthrall my followers will result in a repetition of your punishment."

Harry was too busy sucking water through his tortured gills to even attempt a response. He was stunned by the suddenness of pain and the utterly shattering quality of it. He'd been so close to… to…to to…

He slammed his eyes closed and focused on pulling water into his body.

"I had thought that occlumency would provide some shielding, my Lord," Snape was saying from somewhere beyond the glass. He sounded as shaky as Harry felt. "I am ashamed to say that I lost control almost instantaneously."

"His hatred for you is particularly strong," Voldemort said. "But mental discipline is no protection against soul magic. It is good that you see now how powerful mersong can be, Severus. You shall not be caught off-guard again, will you?"

"No, my Lord."

A rap on the glass, and to Harry's shame, he flinched back into the corner of the tank. He was slowly picking up the pieces of his thoughts and realizing just how close he had come to cracking. He had barely kept himself back from outright begging, from degrading himself to plead for mercy from a psychopathic madman. He'd thought he was stronger than that, he'd thought -

"Harry. My followers are off-limits. Do you understand?"

Harry rasped out a curse that sounded like notes from a cracked wooden flute. Voldemort probably knew it wasn't a meek acceptance, but Harry had proved he'd heard, and that seemed to be all Voldemort cared about.

"Bella will be here any moment," Voldemort said, turning back to Snape.

Harry felt so incredibly sick, both from pain and shame, and his cursed body wouldn't even retch. The wounds he'd torn into his skin were turning the surrounding water a translucent shade of pink. It was the mental strain, he made himself think. That was why just a single curse had undone him so thoroughly, both the other day and today. He'd been relatively fresh when Voldemort had interrogated him, and Harry had had goals to keep him focused on something other than the pain. He didn't have that anymore, and his mental stability was already teetering from isolation and confinement.

You're losing lucidity every day, a Hermione-like voice in his head murmured. We aren't meant to be alone. Solitary confinement is a cruel punishment. Even without the dementors in Azkaban, I wouldn't be surprised if the prisoners went insane…

Bellatrix twirled out of the floo moments later, grinning as if she hadn't been bleeding out the last time Harry had seen her.

"You're late," Snape snarled at her.

Bellatrix pouted. "You're early."

"Severus, heal the cuts. Bellatrix, prepare the tank." Voldemort did not yell, but his cool tones undercut their bickering and silenced them just as effectively.

"My Lord," Snape acknowledged. They set to work. Harry glared at the two death eaters while they shrunk his tank. He was still trembling visibly from Voldemort's torture, and kept his back to the glass in a futile effort to stay out of reach. Snape stood far enough back that Harry could not easily reach him, murmuring healing charms that knit Harry's split skin back together cut by cut. Bellatrix hummed, waiting, eyes fixed on Harry with unnerving focus.

Snape's work only took a minute or two. He turned away, a few shades paler than normal, and Bellatrix bounced on her toes when she stepped forward.

"I'll tuck you in," Bellatrix crooned. "Nice and snug in a bed full of spikes -"

"Get on with it," Snape hissed.

"You're no fun, Sevvie," Bellatrix pouted. Snape's face remained stony.

Bellatrix conjured a lid on Harry's prison, then rapped the tip of her wand against the glass near Harry's face. Sound from outside the water was dulled to indistinct noise, but Harry could see her cackling at something else she'd said, and he hissed.

Harry braced himself when Snape and Bellatrix levitated the tank. It was larger than the last time he'd been moved, which, admittedly, was a low bar to clear. It was around three feet deep and wide, and was long enough for Harry's tail. A small box, but not the coffin-like dimensions he'd been trapped in last time.

Voldemort led them out through the office door, not wasting any time. Harry's suspicions were confirmed when he recognized the lush paneled halls and gilded sconces from level one in the Ministry - the Minister's level. He was hauled through the winding passages and into an elevator, which expanded to fit him. He locked his arms against the walls of the tank as Voldemort selected a button to take them to the Atrium, and was glad for his forethought when a moment later, the elevator's erratic movement sent the water sloshing madly in every direction.

Where were they going? If Harry was being moved, why not take the floo, like last time? And, why were two of Voldemort's top death eaters doing the grunt work of levitating him?

The elevator doors opened, and Harry heard the dull rush of external noise diluted through glass and water increase in volume. Snape and Bellatrix moved Harry's tank out into the Atrium behind Voldemort. Four wizards wearing dark red robes and glossy masks closed in around the Dark Lord in a protective formation almost immediately, and two more fell into place at the rear of their small procession. Harry peered around and realized they had emerged behind a constructed platform built facing away from the elevators, just past the central statue and fountain. White fabric was draped at the platform's front, concealing the crowd Harry guessed was on the other side from view.

The tank thunked as the death eaters set it on the tiled ground. Harry spun around to see Voldemort and gaped when he realized that at some point between the elevator and now, the Dark Lord had gained smoothly styled black hair, a chiseled nose, and hazel eyes. He stood taller than the protective detail, expression cold but composed and human.

There was something of the teenage Tom Riddle in the facade, though Harry thought that the face was strangely off in a way he couldn't explain. On the surface, Voldemort looked fairly ordinary, but there was something inherently wrong with it him that he couldn't fully disguise.

They waited. Harry strained to interpret the dull flush of sound that made it past his glass prison, but there was no distinction to the noise.

He pounded a fist upwards towards Snape, but the man didn't even glance down.

Minutes after they'd entered, Voldemort moved forward. There was a staircase just ahead of him, and he mounted it smoothly while the guards stayed back. Snape and Bellatrix moved up behind him, side-by-side. They disappeared past a curtained backdrop set up on the platform.

Harry wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but the noise in the Atrium seemed to drop. Voldemort was making a public appearance. Hadn't Umbridge mentioned something about a press conference? Was this it? Was Voldemort announcing victory right here in the Ministry?

The red-robed guards surrounded Harry and levitated him, then rotated the tank and lined it up to move up the stairs next. They waited for something Harry couldn't hear. Minutes dragged by, agonizingly slow without sound to give them meaning.

Then the tank lurched into motion without warning, and Harry was pushed through the curtains onto the stage.

A/N: Bartholomew is my new favorite character. Anyone else?