Spring term proceeds at breakneck pace. Harry thinks it has something to do with being so busy: he feels like he has some sort of lesson or Quidditch practice or a study session every evening, as well as class every day, and homework, and plenty of social time on the weekends, now that he has what feels like a large number of friends. Of course he knows that his social circle, which is largely limited to Blaise, Theo, Hermione, Neville, Ron, and Millicent (and the lattermost only sometimes), is smaller than many others, but it's more friends than he'd ever imagined having. And that doesn't even include the Quidditch team, with whom he is increasingly friendly, and Gemma and her friends, who are more and more like his friends and not just his allies; he knows he'll be sad to see them graduate in another year, or two in the case of Warrington.
Harry's lessons proceed apace. His lessons with Snape stay as brutal, but he becomes more able to bear up under the assaults on his mind, until, at the end of March, he actually manages to redirect Snape properly, showing him a curated collection of memories rather than whatever it was Snape had been grasping for. Snape hadn't praised him, of course, but the glint in his eye when he'd nodded his head had been praise enough. Harry has no idea how he'd stand up to a stronger or differently talented Legilimens—if there even is a stronger Legilimens than Snape, who's really a very terrifying force to have sweeping into your mind—but he's confident he could withstand someone of Snape's caliber at least long enough to… try something else. Maybe. He hopes.
Easter break arrives early in April, and Sirius once again quietly informs Harry in the week before that he'll be gone over the break, continuing the hunt for Voldemort. As with Christmas, Harry forces himself to understand, to not be disappointed; it's easier now than it was then, with experience of this particular disappointment and with the looming knowledge that Voldemort must be getting closer and closer to restoring himself. So Harry stays at Hogwarts, and so does Neville. More people stay over Easter break than over Christmas, so the castle isn't nearly as quiet, but the mood is studious rather than celebratory. Most of the fifth and seventh years stay to study for their upcoming exams, and Harry finds himself wandering under his Invisibility Cloak more than one evening after curfew for a little bit of solitude, often playing with his dad's lily necklace where it hangs around his neck; he's taken to wearing it on the nights he feels most unsettled. Hermione has been insistent about beginning exam preparations of their own, and though Harry loves her and knows she's doing it for good reason, he doesn't need it half as much as Ron does—not that that means he can get any peace. So he puts up with her hounding during daylight hours, spending time with her and Ron and Neville, and the mornings and evenings he spends with Blaise and Theo, catching up on chatter and gossip from Slytherin House and the political realm, and after the sun sets he goes for walks in the moonlit corridors. It helps to reinforce his Occlumency, he tells himself, and it does do that; he has a mid-week lesson with Snape that proves it, once again successfully sliding Snape's attention to the memories Harry wants him to see, and keeps him from breaching any of the solid stone walls of his interior Hogwarts. Mostly, however, his wandering salves the restlessness he feels, knowing that Sirius is out there, hunting their shared enemy, and he's stuck here because he's just a kid.
Harry finds himself out later than usual on the last night of the break. It's near eleven, and he's wandering the seventh floor, examining the tall windows and the moon hiding behind cloud visible through them. Waning crescent, approaching half, he thinks; he's gotten a lot better at knowing the moon phases after nearly a year of knowing Remus. A few more weeks to the full moon—but something about tonight has energy crawling along his skin anyway, twice as much as previous nights of the week. Maybe it's that tomorrow, Easter Monday, everyone who left for the break will be returning on the train, and the school will again be noisy and filled with life; classes will resume Tuesday, and whatever peace and quiet Harry has managed to find over the break will be fully gone. Truthfully, he's not ready to face it, and the restlessness his anxiety inspires makes him feel equally unready to face going to bed just yet. So he lets his feet carry him onward.
Eventually, he manages to get himself a bit turned around in the corridors on the fifth floor—his knowledge of Hogwarts is good, but it might be impossible to actually have perfect knowledge; he's half convinced that the doors change sometimes, and the suits of armour definitely trade places on an irregular schedule. It's enough to confuse even him despite his year and more of wandering, so he pulls out the Marauder's Map, which he carries at almost all times nowadays, and tries to figure out where he is. He locates himself quickly enough—but also, to his surprise, finds the footprints labelled Neville Longbottom placed in an alcove a little ways outside the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, not tucked up in his dorm. Harry debates with himself a moment, then decides he might as well make sure his friend is okay. He wasn't planning to go back to Slytherin quite yet, after all, so he heads that direction.
He pauses in the hallway around the corner from where Neville is and pulls off the Invisibility Cloak, and tucks it and the Map into his satchel before scuffing his feet as he approaches. Neville is tucked into the alcove, sitting on a bench in front of a curtained window, barely visible from down the hall, but Harry can tell he goes stiff at the noise. His face appears around the edge of the wall, pale in the darkness, and he lets out a sigh of relief when he sees it's Harry approaching.
"Hey," he says softly, once Harry is within earshot.
"Hey," Harry replies. "Couldn't sleep?"
Neville gives a bit of a shrug. He's in his pyjamas, not wearing a cloak or anything. "Had a nightmare, decided I needed to get out of Gryffindor for a minute. Ron snores."
Harry nods, understanding—he'd needed some space tonight himself, after all. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Yeah." Harry glances down at the stone floor, scuffing his foot against it gently, not sure what to say.
"Want to come into the common room?" Neville asks, after a moment of silence. "It's getting a bit chilly."
That's true, probably more for Neville than for Harry, who still has his shirt and trousers on from the day, and had been wrapped in a cloak only a few minutes ago. Still, the offer is a little surprising. "You sure?" he asks. "That's definitely against the rules."
Neville shrugs. "No one else was awake when I came down. It'll be fine, especially if you're with me."
"Oho," Harry says, a little amused, as Neville gets up out of the alcove and waves him after him toward the Fat Lady's portrait which allows access to Gryffindor Tower. "The mighty Boy-Who-Lived going to use his clout to get his Slytherin friend into the common room?"
"That wasn't really what I meant," Neville says, turning his head so that Harry can see him rolling his eyes. "And you know it, you prat. Whatever, just come on, I don't want to be caught by Snape."
"He's not on patrol tonight," Harry says. "And anyway, it's half eleven, the professors will be headed for bed themselves soon."
"True," Neville says, but doesn't slow down as he walks toward Gryffindor. Harry notes that Neville isn't wearing shoes, and smiles a little when it reminds him of his encounter with Luna Lovegood over the Christmas break—he hasn't spoken to her since, but he's seen her and exchanged smiles or nods a few times in the halls or at meals. He hasn't seen her wandering barefoot again, at least.
It's only a few minutes' walk back to the Fat Lady, and Neville offers the password in an undertone, ignoring the portrait's arch look at Harry—Harry suspects she might tattle on them even if they don't get caught immediately, but decides the loss of points is worth it. Then again, she hadn't ratted them out when Neville had snuck him in the one previous time, so maybe they'll be fine.
Inside, everything is as red and gold as he remembered it. The fire is burning low, lending an orange light that casts everything in even warmer tones, and Harry and Neville go to sit together on the red-and-burgundy striped couch in front of the smouldering logs. Harry slides his satchel strap over his head and lets it come to rest on the floor next to him, and crosses his legs; Neville tucks his feet up under himself, probably to warm them up after going walking on the cold stone floors outside.
"Everyone'll be back tomorrow," Neville says, after a moment. "It seems mad that we're so close to end of term."
"Yeah," Harry sighs. "It doesn't feel real."
"No." There's another brief pause, and Harry turns to stare into the fire, watching for shapes formed in the few remaining flickers of flame that flare up and dance. "D'you think Sirius will have found anything?"
Harry shrugs, still staring into the fire. "I hope so."
"But probably not."
"No," Harry says, and looks back to meet Neville's eyes, deep brown and ringed with dark circles. He's been having worse nights than usual, Harry supposes. Then again, it's not like Harry's gotten much sleep this week either. "No, I don't think he'll have found anything. Voldemort's been too wily for that."
"What are we going to do?"
"If he comes back?" Harry shakes his head, looks down, and then back up. "What we have to, I guess."
"Right."
In Harry's peripheral vision, the fire flickers up brighter, and he glances over—then it flares, tall and bright and green. A shadow appears even as Harry leaps to his feet; Neville does the same but stumbles briefly, his feet still caught under himself. And then the shadow materialized into a man. Narrow-faced, foxlike, haunted and hungry; Harry recognizes him immediately from a photo Sirius had shown him: Bartemius Crouch Junior, one of the Death Eaters responsible for the torture of his parents… a man supposedly imprisoned for life in Azkaban.
"Hello, boys," Crouch says, grinning. His wand is already in his hand. Harry flicks his wrist, feels his holly wand fall into his palm, but he can't raise it before Crouch aims and hisses, "Stupefy."
There's a flash of red, then nothing.
Harry wakes with a headache clawing at the inside of his skull very much like the ones he gets after being stunned in a practice duel with Sirius, though much, much worse. He groans quietly, shifting, and finds that he can't move much: there's some force binding him tightly, keeping his arms to his sides and his legs tied together. A body bind of some sort, he guesses, though not a regular Incarcerous; he doesn't know what it is. He's lying on his front on a hard floor, probably stone if the chill is anything to go by—but somewhere to his left is a source of heat, radiating through him. He can hear the subdued crackle and hiss of a fire, more like the magical flames used in Potions class than that of a normal fireplace, and turns his face that direction before opening his eyes.
Directly in front of his face is a sumptuous rug, brightly coloured at one time but clearly stained with ash; perhaps he's lying on the stone in front of a fireplace. The rest of the room is small and without windows, maybe a sitting room or a den at one time, but clearly it's not in any normal use any more. There are no chairs or coffee tables or settees; instead, a fire is burning in the middle of the room. There are also, he thinks, a few people standing around—well, at least one, a backlit figure in front of the fire—but his glasses are askew on his face and he can't move to adjust them.
Suddenly, a woman's harsh cackling laugh issues from somewhere near his feet, and a pair of legs enter his field of vision. "Number two's awake!" the woman cries in a scratchy voice, and a foot draws back and then lands hard in the middle of his ribs. Harry coughs, the wind knocked out of him, and tries to roll away; it's difficult with his arms bound. "Wiggle wiggle, little worm!"
When he doesn't move any further, she kicks him again, harder this time; he winces and twists his face against the floor. It's humiliating to grind his own nose into the dirt, but it lets him get his glasses back on properly, and he writhes around until he's on his back and can glare up at the woman standing above him. She's got high cheekbones and a broad face, which would lend a kindly look to any other person, but paired with the nasty grin on her lips only makes her look sadistic. She draws back her foot to kick him again, but is interrupted by another voice.
"Enough," the person commands—they sound like a woman… almost. But their voice is doubled, echoing, as if a man and a woman were speaking together. "Do not force me to remind you of your priorities, Alecto."
"No, my Lord," the woman says, immediately turning to bow deeply. "At once."
Then the woman moves out of the way, and Harry can finally see the room properly. The scratchy-voiced woman, Alecto, heads over toward one side of the room where a man with her same red hair and similar features is standing; twins, Harry decides. He can ignore them unless one of them comes over to start kicking him again.
What he cannot ignore is the figure standing in the centre of the room, in front of the fire Harry had identified earlier. That figure is backlit, and without his glasses he hadn't been able to tell much about other than that there is someone there. But now he can see clearly that there's a woman standing there, mussed blonde hair unbound and falling in waves around skeletally thin shoulders… and she's heavily pregnant. The contrast of massive round belly to the thinness of the rest of her body makes her look distorted, warped; Harry's seen pregnant women before and they seemed to glow with health, full of life. This woman looks like a bloated corpse.
"Bloody hell," Harry whispers to himself.
Alecto cackles again—and so does another man on the other side of the room. Harry glances there briefly, and finds his attention arrested by not only Bartemius Crouch Jr., who had earlier stepped out of an impossible Floo connection into the Gryffindor common room, the one now laughing, but also by the round, whiskery face of a man Harry suspects must be Peter Pettigrew. No photos of him less than eleven years old exist, other than in his rat form, but while the years as Scabbers did not treat him kindly, he's familiar. Harry narrows his eyes, and then remembers the pregnant woman and shifts his attention back there.
"We are nearly prepared," the pregnant woman says, smiling to herself. "Midnight nears. And you, boy, will have the pleasure of witnessing my resurrection—as will Neville Longbottom. Wake him."
This last was directed toward the twins. It's the man this time who comes over, and Harry turns his head to watch as he bypasses Harry completely. He hadn't realized, but on his other side, between him and an old fireplace with a fire still burning down, is Neville's prone form. He's clearly still unconscious from the Stunner, and he's bleeding from a wound on his head—it looks like he'd struck his head, maybe on the floor when he fell, or maybe they'd smacked him. But he twitches when the male twin drives a foot hard into his ribs, like the female twin had with Harry.
"Lay off!" Harry shouts, when the man reels back to kick him again. His words are ineffective, of course; the man only lays into Neville harder for it. This time it's enough to wake Harry's friend, and he coughs and twitches, curling away from the blows unconsciously.
"Wh—" Neville manages, and then a third kick lands. Harry wriggles around as much as he can and manages to fight his way through a sit up, shouting "I said lay off, you bastard!"
The man just laughs and goes to kick Neville again, but this time Neville sees it coming and rolls. The man, unprepared for Neville to not be there, stumbles. Harry manages to restrain a burst of hysterical laughter, and instead glances over his shoulder at the sound of an irritable hiss to see the pregnant woman wave a hand. The man is thrown away from Harry and Neville, landing with a thump against the wall; Harry feels the brush of force as it goes past above his head and ducks back down, slumping onto his back.
"Harry," Neville whispers. "Is that—"
"Yeah," Harry replies, just as quiet.
Neville's face is white with fear and pain already; he can't pale any further, but Harry suspects he would if he could. "Yeah," Harry repeats, and then turns his head to watch. The pregnant woman has turned her back on them, unconcerned now that they're both awake to act as witnesses. She gestures to either side of her, calling her followers together, and they come readily, even the twin who'd just been flung carelessly against a wall.
"The time is nigh," she says, in that strange doubled voice of hers. Then she uses an imperious finger to direct the twins and Crouch and Pettigrew into places evenly spaced around the fire. Only seconds after they finds their places, a clock, somewhere, begins to chime midnight. "Begin," she says, and then steps into the flames, which immediately blaze frighteningly high, consuming her figure. There's a beat, and then magic flares too, so much that Harry can feel it, even never having trained that sense; the thrum is heavy and sick, and behind him, Neville whimpers. The four Death Eaters—that's what they had to be—begin to chant; the woman in the fire screams, and keeps screaming, the sound pure agony and grating to the ear.
"Fuck," Harry whispers, and hysterically thinks that even Remus wouldn't scold him for swearing, given the context. None of the participants in the ritual notice, so he risks turning to Neville, who's staring past the top of Harry's head with a wide mouth. "Neville."
Neville seems to snap out of his daze and focuses on Harry's face. Good. "Harry…" he says, then shakes his head. "What do we do?"
Harry shrugs. "They took us here through the Floo, must've been."
"Okay." Neville seems to catch his hint, and turns to look up toward the mantlepiece. "There."
Harry can see it too—there's a pot on the mantel that might still have Floo powder in it, if they haven't warded the fireplace. It's a big if, but better than nothing, which is what they currently have. Neville hasn't got his wand, and Harry's holly wand is missing too, of course. Well—he tenses his thigh his leg, finds that he can feel that the hidden holster is still there, and the rowan wand is in it. But he's not sure it's any use, not at the moment; getting a wand into his hand would only make it more obvious that they were trying something. So, for all intents and purposes, they've got nothing. Nothing and the agonized screams of a woman burning to death, and over that the chanting of four Death Eaters working in tandem to bring back their Lord.
"Can you move enough?" he asks, lowering his voice even further.
Neville tries, twisting around, then relaxes with a strained huff and shakes his head. "But we've got to get out of here. If they—"
"I know," Harry says. "Alright. I've got a plan." It comes into his head almost as he says the words, and he knows it's insane—he knows he'll probably die. But Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived; he needs to get out, because if he stays he'll definitely die the moment that ritual is completed.
"Okay," Neville replies. Both of their voices are so low that Harry feels almost that he's reading Neville's lips rather than actually hearing him, but it's enough.
"When you're free," Harry whispers, as loud as he's willing beneath the chanting, because he can't risk Neville not understanding. "Go to the hospital. Get help."
"Come with me," Neville whispers back. "I'm not going to leave you here."
Bloody Gryffindors! "You have to," Harry hisses, so fierce that Neville flinches. Both of them freeze, and Harry turns to look over at the ritual again, but even in his vehemence he'd managed to stay quiet. "You need to get help, and you've got a head wound, you can't help. You can't focus, can you?"
Neville reluctantly shakes his head and looks past Harry's shoulder fearfully once more. "I don't know where we are."
"It's fine," Harry says. It's a lie, but he hopes Neville can't tell that. "I'll be okay. As soon as the spell loosens, go."
Neville closes his eyes tightly for a moment, his whole face warped with misery and fear. Then he opens his eyes again, steady brown meeting Harry's squarely, and he gives a tiny nod. Harry smiles grimly, and then he looks at Neville's body, pictures ropes binding him for something to focus on, and centres his will. He Occludes, layering a hard shield of focus around his construct, the centre of his thoughts and emotions, and with that closes his mind as much as he can to any outside distractions: the heat and the chanting in the background, the fear churning in his gut, the ache in his shoulders and the faint lingering dizziness of the Stupefy. If he wants to get this right, none of that can matter, just for this one moment. He looks at Neville's arms, bound tight to his sides, and he arrows his focus, and quietly, as intently as he dares, he whispers, "Finite Incantatem."
There's a split second where nothing happens. Neville remains bound, and with every passing moment they're in more danger of that ritual being completed; once it's done, Harry knows they'll both shortly be dead. This has to work the first time, because he doesn't have any guarantee of a second chance.
And then with a soft slithering sound, almost like the hiss of a snake, Harry can see Neville's arms come loose, sliding away from his body as if the ropes Harry had imagined have been untied from around him. He shrugs and his arms come free entirely, and then as swiftly as he can he rolls, twists, rises; he grabs a handful of the Floo powder left carelessly in its small sack on the mantlepiece. A moment later, in a flash of green fire that sears itself into Harry's eyes—will a green flash, just like that, be his own last sight in just a few moments?—and with a cry of "Saint Mungo's!", Neville is gone. And Harry is alone.
He has only a split second to feel the relief of knowing his friend his safe, and then a hard hand grabs the back of his shirt and hauls him up. His collar pulls tight around his throat, and he chokes, twisting in the grip of—the male twin, he realizes. "You wretch!" the man screams, unhinged. As he speaks spittle flies into Harry's face, and he flinches away, trying to snag a breath. "You've cost my Lord his prize!"
"Amycus, get back here!" Alecto snaps from the fireside. "You idiot, the ritual isn't stable!"
The male twin, Amycus, shakes Harry once more before dropping him and racing back to his place to resume the chant. Harry falls hard to the floor and lands poorly, one elbow cracking against the floor in a blinding flash of pain, and then a moment later his skull strikes the ground and bounces; the smack sets his head ringing and he lies there, stunned, for a small eternity. Finally, he manages to shake his head, and immediately has to swallow back nausea. Concussion, maybe, he thinks; he'd gotten one when Aunt Petunia took that swing at him with the frying pan that one time. The room is hot and loud and bright, the flame having flared white somewhere in that confusing second of forever where he'd been lost to pain. The woman is still screaming, but so hoarsely now that Harry thinks her voice is due to give out any moment—or maybe her whole body will simply turn to ash. He can't see her any more, lost in the light of the white flames.
His mouth is dry, and he can't tell whether it's from the heat or from fear. The latter he shoves down as hard as he can, because he will not die afraid. Neville is free, he reminds himself. Neville is free. And then he hides that, too: he's dizzy, but he's practiced his Occlumency so much in the last six months that even distracted and concussed he can find the halls of Hogwarts in his head and make his deepest truths safe there. He can tell already that he won't have the focus for another wandless Finite, but he can do this. He can fold away everything that really matters about himself and leave behind the cold, calculating Slytherin that he's learned to become: the one who can choose his friends on the basis of their ability to keep secrets; the one who would do anything, learn anything, to survive; the one who knows the value of what he's got because of how little he had before. Maybe that will be enough to keep him alive.
It takes longer than he means, though, and when he returns his focus to the real world, things have shifted, as if time had sped forward. The fire has turned even brighter, whiter, almost impossible to look at, but Harry can't look away as the energy in the room coalesces. The chanting grows louder for a moment, and the light shifts, moulds to the invisible figure in the middle: no longer the shape of the woman, short and deathly thin, but a tall male silhouette with an athletic build. Then the chanting stops, and the light blinks out, and there's a moment of absolute silence and darkness. Harry can't even breathe to break the quiet, the weight of magic in the room is so heavy. A red light sparks and glows in the centre of the room, where the fire had burned before. It grows upward and spreads, filling the same human shape, until the silhouette is complete, and then the torches—Harry hadn't even noticed them before, drowned out as they had been by the fire—relight. As air returns and Harry draws a desperate gasp of air into his lungs, he finds himself staring no longer at a figure of white fire or blood-red light, but at a man, naked, with perfect bone-pale skin covering long limbs, living flesh formed exquisitely from fire and pain; he glances around with a look of derision on aristocratic features that seem sculpted from inhuman marble. The Death Eaters are all slumped on the floor, unconscious, and so the reborn man steps over their bodies, uncaring, and retrieves a black robe for himself from a hook on the wall. He slides it over his arms slowly, clearly savouring the sensation and folds it closed with the same care, and then turns to look at Harry.
His eyes are red like blood, like the light that had filled him, brought him to life; they seem to glow with that same light as he steps closer on bare feet. Only earlier, Harry recalls hysterically, the sight of his friend's bare feet had reminded him of happier times. Seeing this man tread barefoot across a dusty, ashy floor, his white skin slowly becoming sullied by blackness, is terrifying.
"Well, well, well," says Voldemort. His voice is like silk and smoke, smooth and heady, rich and whispering at the edges. It's like listening to Snape, who can command a room with a word, but more. "Who, then, are you? To have cost me my prize, as my loyal one said?"
Harry swallows hard, caught entirely by Voldemort's gaze, and says nothing for a moment, until Voldemort has drawn close. With every step, the light in the room seems to grow dimmer, as if drawn into his skin; the Dark Lord is a black hole in the space, all the power in the world drawn in toward him. Then, Harry says, his voice hoarse, "I swear, my Lord, I did not set Longbottom free. I beg you—do not let me die before I've lived."
Voldemort's eyes narrow, and he raises a hand. As if grabbed by that same hand, Harry rises up into the air, manipulated into a kneeling position and then held there. "What is your name."
It's not a question; Harry doesn't hesitate in answering. "Harry Potter, my Lord. M-my name is Harry James Potter, and I would join your service."
Voldemort blinks, once, slowly. On another person, it would be an undignified reaction betraying surprise; on him, Harry… can't even tell. Every part of this man is dignity and power, and Harry can't read his face at all. "Interesting," Voldemort says. There's a faint sibilance to the word; Harry isn't sure if it's natural, affected, or if it came from the ritual in some way. "You would pledge yourself to me? After all my followers have cost you?"
Harry knows that his parents must be close to the top of his mind, and he can't put them away. "Yes," he says anyway. "Your followers weren't the ones who abandoned me to a miserable childhood—that was Dumbledore. And though I can't say I don't hate Bellatrix Lestrange and that one," he looks at the prone form of Crouch, would point if he weren't still bound, "it's not them I'm willing to follow. It's you, my Lord."
Voldemort tilts his head, and then he reaches into his sleeve and withdraws a wand, pale like bone and beautiful. He holds it in a half-open hand, almost careless, but Harry knows that that loosely-held wrist could snap to aim at any target in an instant; by all accounts, Lord Voldemort was a deadly duelist beyond measure. The wand comes around slowly, until it rests against Harry's temple, and there's a moment of stillness. Harry waits to die. Then Voldemort hisses, "Legilimens."
He's inside Harry's mind in an instant. His surface level shields are torn away, and he cries out, tries to cringe away from the pain, but it's inside him. Voldemort's darkness races through the halls of Harry's internal Hogwarts in a roil of blackness, burning like acid as it passes; doors are flung open, walls eroded, windows shattered outward to piece Harry's mind. It hurts, more than anything Snape has ever done to him, but he endures, tucks love and fear ever deeper inside and shows the Dark Lord what he wants: hate. Memories of abuse by the Dursleys, the endless shouting and degradation, being worked like a house elf and beaten on day after day by Dudley; loneliness and isolation, as a child, even at Hogwarts; uncertainty and resentment of this strange new world, one that should have been his, that should have claimed him with open arms and welcomed its lost son and didn't. His disdain for Draco Malfoy, a snivelling spoiled brat who thinks he can have anything he wants without having to stand up and claim it, who doesn't know what power is for all he tries to pretend to it. His dislike of Dumbledore, who moved around the people and events in Harry's life like they were pieces on a chessboard, whose mistrust of Slytherin is obvious every time he looks at Harry, who acts grandfatherly but doesn't care who has to bleed for his aims.
He's a wizard, a Slytherin, the Heir to a powerful line, and Harry knows that for a brief moment, lives in it, wraps himself up in the knowing and turns it outward so that Voldemort can see why Harry would offer this: he wants, not just to live, but to thrive. To be everything that he can be, to never be under anyone's thumb ever again, even if it means throwing off all the chains of law and morality and taking the power he needs to be free.
It hurts. It hurts so much. Even as Voldemort withdraws, satisfied, it feels as though he's raking claws against the walls of Harry's mind, leaving bleeding wounds that Harry fears will never heal—but he has to heal. He's not done getting stronger; he refuses to be weaker.
Harry blinks open his eyes, not even realizing he'd closed them, and finds himself staring into that pure, shining blood-red ruby colour of Voldemort's gaze. Voldemort is smiling.
"And did you let Longbottom go?" he asks, smooth and calm.
"No," Harry whispers. His voice is even more hoarse than before, and it hurts to speak, he can taste blood at the back of his throat; he must have screamed. "He's been learning wandless magic. I didn't think he was capable of a Finite Incantatem, but he might have managed it."
Voldemort skims the surface of his mind again—Harry's shields are in tatters, he can't stop him. But what he's said is enough the truth that he can disguise the lie, even so broken. Desperation is an excellent motivator. "Very well," Voldemort says, after a moment. "If it turns out you lied to me, boy—"a vicious and pointed use of Vernon's epithet, which the Dark Lord would have seen many memories of—"you will suffer for it before you die."
"I know," Harry replies, and smiles weakly. "I would expect nothing else, my Lord."
"And what will you do, if I let you go? Scurry away and hide, I imagine. Better I kill you now." The wand drifts down to rest against Harry's throat, bared where he's forced to crane his neck to look at the Dark Lord.
"No," Harry whispers. "I swear. I'll spread word of your return, your rise to power, so that all know to fear you, and when you call me I will come to your side. Dumbledore couldn't stop you from taking Longbottom this time—you'll have him again. He sees me as a friend, even; you can use me."
"I can," Voldemort says. That smile on thin, pale lips widens. "I could kill you now. But I will not. If you return when summoned, then I will know you are in earnest. If you do not, what your parents suffered will seem like mercy."
Harry nods, and isn't prepared for it, should have been, isn't, when Voldemort twists his wand and whispers, "Crucio."
Agony, worse than before, blazes through every part of Harry's body. The headache he'd already had turns splitting, until he feels like he must be bleeding from his eyes; fire burns him, his bones break and are broken again. He twists, falling to the ground; he's still bound and can only writhe around snakelike against hard stone that he can barely feel through the pain. There's nothing, nothing at all, except for pain; it goes on forever.
Then it stops, and he's left panting harshly, his breath rasping in a throat torn from screaming. Voldemort is laughing, almost a fond sound, and then a wave of force sends Harry skidding across the floor to slam against the iron grate that holds the firewood; it's hot and hard and burns him through his shirt, and he feels lucky not to feel his ribs break. To his relief, when he tries to roll away, his movements are arrested by nothing but lingering trembling caused by his earlier suffering; the binding is gone.
"Get out!" Voldemort commands. "Go after Longbottom, and tell that old fool in his high tower that I am coming for him and his little hero too, and that I am immortal, reborn and arisen; nothing he does can stop me now."
Harry scrambles up to his feet as quickly as he can, nearly toppling again as blood rushes downward and he goes lightheaded, and manages a shaky bow. Before he passes out or Voldemort changes his mind, he grabs a fistful of Floo powder, throws it into the dying coals in the fireplace, and shouts, "Saint Mungo's!"
The world turns, spins around him, and then he is gone.