Heavy in Your Arms, Florence and the Machine
I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced a crown
I was a heavy heart to carry
My feet dragged across the ground
And he took me to the river
Where he slowly let me drown
My love has concrete feet
My love's an iron ball
Wrapped around your ankles
Over the waterfall
I'm so heavy
Heavy, heavy in your arms
Tom Disapparated over and over. Countless jumps, taken at a frantic sprint, scenery whizzing past—fragments of light and place interweaving—until Harry couldn't breathe.
"Stop, stop, stop, STOP! We left them- I left- Tom- what? What—is—this?" His hands were shaking violently. The constant Apparition made him vomit.
Sweat gluing his overly hot robes to his skin, struggling out of them without thought while he threw up in the snow in the dark.
And in his head, the thing was blooming, rising like a sun, bleaching all the colour out. "Tom- what-"
Tom was holding the Snakewood wand, swaying, vibrating on the spot, "Please… I can't… Please don't do this, please don't hate me. I'm so sorry, Harry, I'm sorry," he choked on overwhelming sobs, vision on a tilt-a-whirl.
"…What-" There was almost no way to get words out, his throat closed tight, panic exploding inside him like he'd swallowed fireworks and a lit match.
'I have to cut your arm off. It won't stop bleeding once I do it. We have a handful of potions from Lydia. Blood…. Replenishing,' Tom held the Snakewood wand just above the Dark Mark, and Harry was pretty sure he'd just thought, 'Cut your arm off.'
'…What? What is- I can't- when did I…' There was no denying it. Violent and vibrant like a supernova. Inescapable and true.
'I'll leave the wand here, then we… Harry stop. Please stop.' The sobs Tom was choking on made him feel like someone had died.
Again, he recalled who he'd left behind. 'We can't run we can't just… My arm?' Harry finally fully registered the impending amputation.
'I can't think of another way,' Tom was about to do it; Harry could feel it, but he could scarcely focus.
'…Tom,' hyperventilating, cold air stinging his lungs with each rapid breath—probably the only thing stopping him from dropping his consciousness, 'I- I love you? How long have I- How could I not know?' He noticed he was on his knees and didn't recall falling.
Tom was trying to squash the panic and fear, and yet more would spring up, a shocked, mournful sound at Harry's thoughts, 'Harry, please, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' He was rocking on his knees, almost wailing, grief that made no sense, welling until it was almost as blinding as the all-consuming adoration.
'…Sorry…?'
'We find the Order. We go to them. I have to do this now. Bite down,' he jammed Harry's robes in his mouth.
'…What?' through the crippling confusion and blinding panic, Harry struggled to get a grip on a single cohesive thought, 'The Order? What are you- why are you sorry? How is this- how could I not know?'
'It's the only way. I- you've left us with no choice- I tried to warn you-' Tom fought to his feet, took the robes out of his mouth and Disapparated another three times.
There was nowhere left in his head to hide anything. All of it was free-floating in plain view.
That it was Harry's idea to seduce the Dark Lord for power. That Tom had ultimately manipulated him into having the thought in the first place. That Cassiopeia had helped, that Nagini had, too. That Ginny was his Secret Keeper, that Reed and Draco had sworn vows. That his Horcrux moved freely into his head whenever he wished it. That the dreams—while they were purely Harry's Horcrux's game—were orchestrated by Tom in Harry's head.
That Harry loved Voldemort.
No line at all between them. For all his insistence that Tom separate Crux from him, he felt for the Dark Lord exactly what he felt for Tom.
'Stop, please, please,' Tom started pleading in his head and then aloud, "Please. I'm sorry. Forgive me, don't break, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel this- I didn't mean- I don't know how-"
And Harry couldn't understand why Tom was begging forgiveness.
He couldn't tell where they were. No longer in a field, instead in woods. Trees he didn't recognise. Still cold, though there was no snow on the ground.
"…He knows. Voldemort knows that I lo-" He couldn't say the word 'love' in the same sentence as his name. "…The unspeakable told him? How-"
"We don't have time for this right now; you said to him- the things you said to him-" He was crying again, wand in hand and right arm extended.
And Harry did remember the things he'd said to the Dark Lord. That he'd killed everyone, taken everything, that he was a monster, that he wasn't worthy to love or be loved.
That he might as well have said it to Tom.
"I don't have time," Tom growled the words through gritted teeth, "Your arm. The Order. If we survive the night, you can tell me what I'm worth and what I am and what I need," he heaved another sob.
A near quiet pop of Apparition behind him had Tom running, a sprint he had to start on his knees.
He was yanked to the ground by magic before he could Disapparate. Winded, Tom laughing—purely manic—rolling in the leaf litter, gasping shocked breaths to cackle back out.
"Where are you going, Harry."
It was dark in the trees, but they were skeletal, leafless, the moon's light just enough to see by. Enough to see that Voldemort was covered head to toe in blood. Slick and reflective on his robes. Caked on his face and hands. He was motionless, not even blinking. Hands at his sides, eyes wide and glassy, like taxidermy beads. Nostrils flared.
Tom rolled to his feet, dizzy from the scarce oxygen, no longer laughing. Wand in hand.
"…Did you- did you kill them?" Harry whispered, fear opening at his feet, a yawning mouth—he fell forever in that instant.
"Say it all again," Voldemort said, monotone, like he was sleepwalking.
He knew that if he tried to Disapparate he'd be stopped. Tom tried anyway, once again knocked off his legs.
Harry scrambled back upright, "Did you kill them? Did you kill them?!"
"…I killed so many so quickly and it didn't even matter. It didn't matter at all. Say it all again, Harry, start from the top, say it." He'd stepped rapidly forward, not enough time to flee him.
"What?" Heat rushed through him, made him nauseous all over again, "Who?!"
Light was breaking through the Dark Lord's skin, his palms starting small fires in the leaf litter. He didn't seem aware of it, in a trance as he continually stepped forward, forcing Harry back until he was caught on a tree.
"This is your fault," Voldemort said it as though he'd asked for the butter to be passed. "I should kill you too. I want to kill you. I should." He looked up, mouth open like a silent laugh, Adam's apple bobbing.
Then he screamed.
At the sky and then at Harry, the few patches of visible skin on his face turning red, splinters of light breaking through his eyes, cheeks, and mouth, "You should be dead! DEAD. SAY—IT—ALL—again…" He lost his breath and crumbled, dragging Harry to the ground with him.
'Something is wrong,' Tom thought, and Harry thought that much was plainly obvious.
"…Say it again," his head was rolling on his shoulders like he was drunk, "Do it. Say it."
"…Who did you kill? Who's dead?" Harry wanted to shake him, couldn't understand how what he'd said had rendered the Dark Lord incomprehensible and covered in blood.
"SAY it again Harry, say it again," he laughed, sobbed, and grabbed Harry's shirt, pulled him close so Harry could smell the blood and the cedar, "I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood—A Lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, beasts of the hill and serpents of the den." He snarled the words, swaying, "I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall."
"-What-"
He held Harry's neck and squeezed, burning. Tom reacted, bursts of the curse that didn't seem to do anything.
His wand in his hand, quickly pinned under the Dark Lord's knee, breaking his wrist immediately.
"Death of the self is a long, tearless night, all natural shapes blazing unnatural light."
"Who- who did you kill? Why?!"
"My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill… The mind enters itself, and God the mind, and one is one is one is one is-" He took Harry's face in both hands, "Say it all again, Harry. Not worthy, begging for my destruction, orphan dandy-boy glaring at what Harry, tell me, what? Not worthy of all that I've taken from you, say it. Say—it."
He held one of Voldemort's wrists, his left hand useless, openly crying, too much in his head—pain, confusion, fear, and what felt like a wildly misplaced love for the man crushing his face and demanding that Harry say he wasn't worthy. "What happened?"
"This is your fault. This is your fault. If they hurt her- if they hurt her I'll feel it and I'll make you feel it. I'll make you feel it forever," whispering, forehead pressed to Harry's, smearing tacky blood.
"They? They who? Hurt who?" Harry asked.
He felt Tom piece it together and understood right after him. The only one the dark Lord might 'Feel' being hurt would be Nagini.
That 'they' must have been the Order. Tom had broken the wards at Drumlanrig, and it was taken as an advantage.
Voldemort hadn't killed his own people, or Harry's friends; he'd slaughtered Order members.
Not enough of them to stop them from taking his familiar. Most of the Death Eaters and Ministry members who might have helped the Dark Lord defend against an onslaught had been rendered utterly useless by the curse.
And then his mind bolted through the rest of the reality. Ginny, Luna, Avalon, Reed, Ruby, Pollux, Draco, Cassiopeia, Narcissa…
"…What happened, tell me what happened?!"
"You did this. You did." The Dark Lord wasn't really in his own mind; Harry could practically feel him hovering right above it. His eyes so close to Harry's that their eyelashes kept colliding.
"What did I do?" Harry was whispering, half certain Voldemort was about to snap his neck.
"They took- they were on the floor because of you," he seemed almost childlike, confused, shocked, lost. "Some ran, it didn't change anything; as soon as the wards fell… It was as though they knew, watching, waiting for you- YOU—DID—THIS," he bashed Harry's head into the tree with the last three syllables. Not far enough from the trunk to do any damage. "Say it all again, Harry, I want to hear you say it again."
Harry didn't say it all again.
"Your Horcrux- The dreams… You said what he said." The Dark Lord was almost pleading, and it didn't make sense.
It wasn't what Harry wanted to hear, hardly the most pressing matter—though it was gargantuan. He said, "…Yes," anyway.
"…And they took Nagini." Light unrelenting.
Heat and unwelcome bliss mingled with the fear that wouldn't abate.
"Who did?" He couldn't stop the tears; his throat almost closed around the golf ball he didn't recall swallowing, Tom reeling in his head as though they were already dead—plans made and scrapped, spells on the tip of his tongue, killing curse included.
"I will tear them apart- I'll fucking decimate them, do you hear me? I will spare nothing. No one," blood drunk, three-quarters of the way to insane, Harry believed him.
"This is your fault," Voldemort repeated, tears smearing the blood on his cheeks, scanning Harry's face almost as though he wanted to find a different truth.
He didn't dare say that it was the Dark Lord's fault. If not orchestrated by him, he caused it by proxy. Tom might have burst the wards, and Harry might have said the words, but there would have been nothing to say, nothing to break, if Voldemort hadn't relentlessly built it.
Shaking despite the warmth of contact, arms and legs numb with panic to spite the darkness engulfing them. Pinned to the tree but not dead.
The Dark Lord seemed as thoroughly astonished as Harry felt. Gasping like landed fish, uncertain of what to do with each other, confusion overwhelming.
"The first dream," Voldemort said, "…Tell me how. Why?"
Harry felt Tom shift from the defensive to the offensive. "Harry's Horcrux came to me. I arranged the first, and the instant I laid eyes on him, I knew there would be no greater weapon with which to mutilate you. And so from that moment on, that's what we sought to do, every dream he presented to me, and I approved and created and watched you fall apart like a soft mewling lamb…"
They laughed at each other, burning, cutting, bleeding, weeping.
The panic approached a fever pitch, aggressively spiting the bliss that made him weak. Seeping down his neck, unable to free himself with the curse—as though he wasn't pushing with it.
"He came to you, did he?" The Dark Lord nodded, rolling his forehead on Harry's, eyes locked.
He knew any moment Voldemort might look inside his head and find it all there, floating in slow motion as though a cartoon explosion had taken place, nothing hidden save for Tom's private, impenetrable space—space that Harry knew wasn't impenetrable at all for the Dark Lord.
"…Nagini?" Harry asked, squirming, pins and needles painful. Stomach-churning.
"I would feel it. If they killed her. Dumbledore knew how. How to destroy-" the Dark Lord gasped as though he'd just registered what was happening, squeezing Harry's face and pushing his head into the bark. "Say it again."
Harry was trying to find the words to ask about the others, the rest of them. Whose blood specifically he was covered in.
Tom was holding the Dark Lord's face in one hand—wand still gripped tight in his left, though it was broken—tracing his thumb over his cheek. Dried blood re-wet and sticky with tears. "He said you are unworthy. Of love. Of everything you have taken from him. That you will never be more than what you have always been, loveless, unwanted, begging for destruction with your heart and fleeing it with your mind. A monster. A killer. Covered head to foot in blood and death even when you are clean. Wrong when you speak and wrong when you are silent. This is your fault."
'I didn't mean that- I didn't mean that about you; I wasn't talking about you,' Harry thought, squeezing his eyes shut—pinging straight back open—sweating all over regardless of the cold and his lack of outer robes.
'It's alright,' Tom sounded far away in his head, 'I understand.'
Harry was covered in goosebumps, and it didn't feel at all like Tom understood. He couldn't have because Harry didn't. His mind ejected, recombined, and reinserted as something entirely new to him. Dozens of thoughts and threads and reasons intermingled to form something that he knew would make sense if he just had the time to examine it.
Voldemort had simply watched him. Expression unchanged through Tom's gentle evisceration.
"They did not only take her," he whispered, breath cooling the tears on Harry's face, "Six hostages. Taken."
"…Who? Who? Who did you kill, who was taken, what happened, I don't understand…"
His Horcrux was tapping on his skull, spiking a fresh round of adrenaline, and he shook his head in refusal. Tom let him in.
'…Wow. And I mean this. Wow. At first, I gotta tell you, I did not think we'd be coming up champs, but you really, really, really showed me, didn't you, Harry?'
He ignored him, pleading for answers with his eyes while he and the Dark Lord struggled with the stalemate.
'What happened,' Tom asked Crux.
'…Mess in here. Disaster, actually. Aw, love.' Crux thought, 'So much love it makes you a bit ill to look at, wouldn't you agree, Tom? How is he taking it? Falling to bits like Morty said he would? Is he? Doesn't look that way to me.'
'What happened,' Tom repeated.
"Who?" Harry asked out loud.
The Dark Lord stood, forcing Harry upright with him.
'You broke the wards; he chased you; you were gone when he reached the doors. Some of your people got out right as you started yelling—not their first rodeo—but it didn't matter because the castle was surrounded immediately. The Order. The Obscurial. Ironwood and his lot. They killed more than they kidnapped, can you believe that? Talk about escalation.' Crux was far too cheerful. 'Morty went ballistic. He saw her taken—Nagini—and then he was slicing necks indiscriminately, Harry. Indiscriminately. If they were in front of him, they died. I counted over twenty. Killed by the Order or by Morty. Twenty-seven.'
"WHO—died?! Who? Tell me! just tell me, please, who did you kill, tell me it wasn't Ginny please just say that, say she's alive, just her, please…" He couldn't stand, though Voldemort tried to enforce it, crumbling into the leaves again, nearly screaming the words—devolving into a whisper when he couldn't draw in a new lungful.
'Aw, alright, Ginny didn't die,' Crux thought, 'Is that better? You're welcome. She was taken though.'
He was picked up by the scruff of his shirt and side-along Apparated without resistance.