(TW: Slight murder here.)


God Be You, Nostalghia

I aint winning, not dead yet

You can't starve me, I'm unfed
You look pretty when you need
I like nicer when I feed

God be willing
God me true
Fuck my conscience
God be you

Would you die, die for me
Into the sea, into the sea
Would you die for me, baby


Harry was presented with a Portkey out of Nurmengard, then Disapparated by the Dark Lord—catching a quick glimpse of the Hogwarts castle before being squeezed through a tube.

Voldemort and his Horcrux were in his mind before he registered where he was.

Standing on bitumen outside a grey stone cottage, only lit by the light spilling from small, round windows, dark on the sparsely populated street—two houses stood beside the road, swallowed by the surrounding woods.

'All this frantic work and not even you three found them. Princess Legs and his lucky breaks at it again?'

The Dark Lord threw the invisibility cloak over their heads, and Crux was ignored.

'Look at this, Morty,' his Horcrux trapped in Harry's opinions on him like a fly in honey. 'This is mine? Can you believe that? Not 'cause he thinks I'm someone else. It's not even an ego thing?'

'…How are we doing this?' Harry wondered, avoiding all other thoughts and blessed by Crux's distraction.

There couldn't be a plan—not enough time to think one through to completion—yet they stood before an Order safe house regardless. Feeling for the wards.

'Here,' the Dark Lord thought, palm extended, 'Detection wards. Anti-Apparition. Anti-Muggle. Alarms. Nothing offensive—stupidity.'

'Morty I said look.'

Voldemort exhaled forcefully, 'If we disrupt the wards, they will be alerted.' His thoughts and emotions bled into Harry's head, merging with Tom's until they were a cacophony, exchanging theories and plans rapidly.

'Look,' Crux repeated.

The Dark Lord squeezed his arm as though it was Harry being a nuisance. Picking apart an idea and quoting magical theories at each other—Tom more cautious than Voldemort.

'Leave the Lethifold here. Hidden,' the Dark Lord thought, a plan forming despite Tom's apprehension.

Breaking the magic would alert whoever was inside—possibly others, a problem because Voldemort had no plans to call any of his followers because of the spy he could only be certain wasn't Narcissa on account of her Vow—and allow Disapparation from within. If they didn't detect the wards breaking, though…

'Would you LOOK?'

'I can see it,' the Dark Lord snapped in his head.

Harry released Bed Sheet from his shoulders and whispered for him to hide and stay uninvolved unless things went to hell. The Lethifold vanished quietly in the dark.

'…What do you think?' Crux wondered, ignorant of Voldemort's tone, 'Suits me, don't you think so? He wants to fuck me in the a-'

'Stop?' Harry thought, frowning at invisible wards.

'No, you stop,' his Horcrux crooned, projecting the most recent dream.

Theoretically, if Harry cut through the wards with the curse and replaced the complex magic with his own, they could pass through and 'lie' to the protection. It involved leaving the darkness there, a suspicious hole in the wards that the Dark Lord was only half certain would work as intended.

And Harry had an ill-timed erection. 'You stop,' he repeated, a highlight reel of Crux on his lap, tongue down his throat, played on a loop.

'No, you,' incredibly amused with himself.

'Both—of—you,' the Dark Lord's and Tom's thoughts finally ground to a halt, silent in his head apart from the chastising, 'Enough.'

'Nah, I don't think so,' Crux thought, 'I'm playing the greatest hits. I don't care what you're doing. What are we doing?' Theatrical in playing dumb, 'See? I don't even know.'

Voldemort returned to ignoring him, seething into Harry's head, 'Do not touch the wards with your hand.'

It was dark—almost pitch—but he could see the Elder wand in Voldemort's grip, clenched tight in his pale, nearly reflective fist. Prepared for his only feasible plan to fail and already angry about it.

Harry followed the instructions laid out in his chaotic mind by the Dark Lord, frequently interrupted by Crux's loud commentary on the memories he kept resurfacing.

'What about this one, Harry?' along with a visceral recollection of Voldemort's mouth on his cock.

Eyes bulging, he summoned the curse, tentatively pressing it to the magic before him. He waited for a sign they'd made a mistake, but the house stayed quiet. No Order members appeared on the street.

'Hey. Tom. Look.' The memory of Crux and Voldemort in the graveyard, heart in his hand, savagely biting the Dark Lord's face.

Voldemort gripped his upper arm tight enough to hurt.

'Can I focus or no?' Harry thought, frustrated, chewing his lips and pushing the curse deeper, wards crackling under the force like hot glass. Clawing agony up his arm, unhelpful.

'No.' Followed by a projection of his mouth on the Dark Lord's cock.

'What do you want, then?' He knew Crux wouldn't stop without incentive.

His cheeks were too flushed to stand where he was standing, Voldemort breathing on his shoulder—too close partly because they were under the cloak, but he knew it was more than that. He could feel the way the Dark Lord felt—though he tried to squash it down. Obsessed.

'What do you wanna give me, Princess?'

Tom put more work in than Harry, threading the magic together while his inner monologue chanted softly about Hepzibah Smith. Aware enough to know that if someone chose that moment to look out a tiny window, they'd see a strange green glow.

'What do you want?'

'What do you want?' Crux parroted. 'Maybe I just wanna keep doing this.' He punctuated the thought with a recollection of Demetria's dinner party. 'That was pretty inspired, Harry.'

'I need to focus,' he insisted. He felt it miss.

'And I need to remind you about your recent adventure in the Nurmengard hot spring.'

In the end Tom took over entirely, laser-focused on the wards—stringing the darkness into the protection and gently breaking pieces free and restructuring them—until a smoke-like door was carved into the magic.

'Are you gonna barge into your best friend's family's house with an erection and kidnap them all?' Crux thought, 'Great idea. You guys are on top of things. 'Masterful control in every situation,' that's what comes to mind when I watch you three. If I had anyone to bet with, I'd put gold on you all fucking before you get to the house.'

If his Horcrux had placed any bets he would have lost. Passing the wards made him glad he left Bed Sheet outside them; a shower of sharp agony that he stepped through quick. They reached the house—Harry trailing the curse along the ground behind him, semi-buried in the patchy snow, a link to the door Tom had opened—and found more wards on the back entrance.

Tom repeated the process under an unending barrage of increasingly horny thoughts from Crux. Faster the second time around despite his relentlessness.

Voldemort subjected to it just the same, alternating between a blank disassociation and frustrated arousal—his emotions clear in Harry's head, another layer of noise.

'Maybe you'll fuck before you get in the house. Oh my God, what if you fuck in the house? That's sick, Harry, there's people in there.' Crux's reminder brought him into the moment more than it served to take him out.

They weren't just people; Ginny was in there, and the Dark Lord's wand was still in his hand.

Breath fogged under the cloak, unmasked—staring at Harry while he stared back. Light seeped from the round window in the door—summoning the shadows that bleed through the fabric and highlighted his face and maybe they would fuck before Tom got the back door unlocked.

'You're fucked in the head, Harry,' Crux thought. '…Fun to watch if absolutely nothing else.'

He felt like his Horcrux always said one thing and meant something entirely other—wound tight enough in Harry's thoughts to discredit himself.

More detection wards were in place on the lock, replaced with their magic under Tom's control. The Dark Lord cast wordlessly on the door—his thoughts almost distraction enough on their own, a stream of stealth-related spells, rage-tinged desperation, and another layer of Hepzibah Smith, joining Tom in furiously pushing away Crux's efforts to derail them.

'Careful, think about her too much and soon enough, you'll have a hard-on anyway. What's that called, Morty?'

'…Pavlovian.' Then, 'Shut up.'

'That's it. You'll Pavlov dog yourselves.'

Tom announced that the magic was as good as he would get it, and Harry adored him. Useless and hopeless without him—more relieved every minute by the knowledge that so long as he was alive, Tom Riddle would share his soul.

'Aren't you busy or something?' Crux announced.

Tom was smug while the Dark Lord opened the door, slow—drenching the yard in light, releasing the voices chattering inside and racing Harry's heart.

His anxiety pitched and drowned out the squabbling. 'We aren't killing them. Any Weasleys. Okay?'

Dragged up the single step and into the house, straight into a white overstuffed kitchen—snaking the curse out the door behind him—his ears fine-tuned to pick up Ginny's voice above all the others.

Talking about her brothers, reassuring her mother—Arthur doing the same.

'You will do your best, will you not?' The Dark Lord thought. His only plan made clear—have Harry do what Harry did best. Explode.

He didn't want to do it. Guilt at the corners of his mind, creeping in fast. Not the first time he'd subjected Ginny Weasley to the curse. This time, he was kidnapping her, too. The sound of her voice told him that the twins were right; Reed had washed out her devotion to Harry. To Cedrum, Eris, and Avalon. That if she knew he was standing in the next room with Voldemort exhaling on his throat, she would sooner run screaming.

Voices he didn't recognise added to the discussion, either bolstering or subduing Molly's fears that the twins were indeed in mortal peril. Bill's voice among them. Cho Chang, almost inexplicably. Ginny's Aunt Muriel—he assumed—and two men he'd never heard before, talking with Arthur, from what he could tell.

He stepped forward to see them—hiding the course he held, creeping under the back door—and wished he hadn't, nauseous at the sight of Ginny, sitting at the dining table beside Cho, holding a cup of tea while Molly paced, looked at the clock—removed from the Burrow and reading 'MORTAL PERIL' for everyone—threw up her arms, and paced again.

A sour-looking woman sat in an armchair, dressed in purple and lace, holding a walking cane in her gnarled grip; she announced, "You'd do well to alert Aberforth, or those boys are as good as dead." She seemed too old to be Ginny's aunt. She was almost too old to be either one of her parent's aunts either—a puff of white hair under a decorative feathered hat.

'Do it,' the Dark Lord thought.

'Yeah, Princess, do it. Blow the roof off, burst their brains out of their skulls.'

'Harry,' Tom chastised Crux, arms raised and shaking, 'I can do it.'

Tom didn't wait for an answer. Darkness burst forth, rapidly engulfed the kitchen, and barrelled into the adjoining room through the archway. Enough time for them to scream but no more than that, swallowed and brought to the ground, falling off chairs and convulsing under black smoke until they stopped moving.

"Hold the wards," Parseltongue in his ear when Tom dropped the majority of the curse.

"What?"

"Do not let them fall," Voldemort repeated, then he pulled the cloak off Harry's head and strode into the opposite room without him.

Harry watched the Dark Lord check behind every door, and then Portkey two of them—Bill and Molly—out of the house, leaving his head as he went.

He felt him push through the darkness he'd left at the wards a few moments later. Harry had stared at the Weasley family from a distance, making sure Ginny was still breathing—red hair splayed on an old hardwood floor.

Tom made sure that Harry kept breathing.

Crux had stopped bombarding him with memories, seemingly content to watch Harry fight guilt—repeatedly assuring himself that he was trying to save them—circumstances had forced his hand.

'Sure they did; they always do, don't they? They'll forgive you; I can tell by how they hit the floor.' Punctuated by laughter, '…I'm gonna go see where he's taking them. I'll see you later, Leg Boy.'

The Dark Lord repeated the process three times without a word—Harry watched, rooted to the spot—and then declared Muriel dead after he picked up her wrist.

"Are you- Are you sure?"

"You will tell no one we were here, do you understand?" When Harry was about to ask again, Voldemort said, "Yes, she is dead."

"Where did you take them…?"

"To Narcissa." The Dark Lord directed him out of the house.

Numb arms and legs as he stumbled onto the lawn—which had turned to sludge with snow; he could almost feel the sharp cold with the darkness that clung to his left wrist.

"Find your Lethifold."

Harry did as directed, bolstered by Tom. He sidestepped through the curse holding the wards intact—hissing like a cat dropped in a bath—and then whistled, high-pitched.

Bed Sheet appeared from behind a nearby low stone wall, rippling close to the ground until he reached Harry, then attached to his shoulders facing the wrong way—so the hood smothered his face—cooing and blasting him with warm air.

"…Okay, hello," Harry corrected the Lethifold and almost smiled.

He watched from outside the wards as the Dark Lord threw considerable magic at the house, blazing gold and red, wand raised, ripping the dirt, bricks, and mortar into a cyclonic frenzy. Harry didn't know where the body was.

Over ashes, he cast again, walking backwards as he washed the ground with light blue luminescence.

Deleting any trace that they had ever been there, destroying their magical signatures—Tom provided the details, but Harry's mind was resistant.

Again, he'd killed someone who didn't deserve it.

Maybe he'd done it for the right reasons. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe it was an accident; maybe he knew how lethal the curse could be when he pressed hard enough. Maybe he knew before he walked in the door that he might kill someone he loved. Might kill someone Ginny loved. Did she love Muriel? Had never mentioned her, he thought. She was dead, and he'd done it, regardless.

Just the same as he'd scrambled her brother's brain and overseen the imprisonment of the twins—set terms, not for release, not really, he knew that Voldemort wasn't going to let any of them go without a fight—gotten Ron killed in the Department of Mysteries and watched her struggle under the weight of carrying her dead brother around—literally. Her brain scrambled by Reed because he'd gotten her so involved she'd divorced her family.

The family that the Dark Lord was in complete possession of.

'I killed her, not you,' Tom thought.

'I let you.'

Voldemort passed through the wards, took Harry's arm, and Disapparated.


He wasn't taken to the Weasleys, and he didn't ask to be.

Exhausted by the night and relieved to see Gwrych. Apparated right into the sitting room with the piano—also relieved that the Dark Lord was keyed straight into the wards. He let Bed Sheet off his shoulders—he took to the ceiling, spiralling under a small chandelier—and collapsed into a chaise. Any energy he had remaining flooded out of him.

Slumped, he watched the Dark Lord pour two glasses, and asked, "What are you going to do with them?"

Voldemort sat beside him and passed a tumbler—Harry took it gratefully.

"Tell me what you would do."

Tom let Harry take a sip of straight whiskey before he launched, "I would have them Squibbed. Temporarily. Thoroughly examine their minds. Then I would have Harry speak with them. While Ginevra is… Brainwashed, and considering the spy, it is best not to involve the necromancers directly—In terms of Ironwood and Reed, Ruby and Pollux will be invaluable. Where are you keeping the Weasleys?"

"…Here."

"Keep them together once they are Squibbed."

"Do we really need to… I mean, it's-" Harry began, then he felt Tom's conviction and rolled his eyes.

The mention of Squib Snakes made him awkward, chronically almost aware of the snake named Sanctus—gnawing relentlessly at the back of his thoughts.

"Why?" The Dark Lord asked.

Harry finished his drink, and his head was yanked onto Voldemort's lap without warning. Fingers in his hair rendered him immediately limp. He tucked his legs up and accepted it, wisps of bliss seeping into his skull. He dropped the tumbler on the carpet.

'Keeping them together will allow the twins to do the work for us," Tom hummed.

"I killed their aunt," Harry told them.

'I did it,' Tom thought, insistent.

"In the scheme of things as they are, Harry, tonight was remarkably free of casualties," Voldemort said, his fingers catching in tiny knots, working them free and shooting chills down Harry's spine.

"Just the one Weasley. The third one I've…" His breath caught, and the Dark Lord sighed. "…I can't keep hurting her like that. She's too important-" Harry stopped himself, sure Voldemort would disregard his concerns.

"We will do as you suggest," the Dark Lord whispered.

He couldn't keep his eyes open, fluttering shut despite fighting it. "You won't kill them, right? Even if they're not… Useful?"

"I will not kill them if I do not need to."

"…Okay?" He supposed it was as good an assurance as he would get, "Thank you."

"I should- If I had-" Voldemort shook himself aggressively enough to open Harry's eyes, "If I disregard that you caused this… I-" He almost looked like his mouth was full of bees, "I appreciate your… Effort."

"Are you thanking me right now?"

"I suppose I am."

"You're welcome." Harry didn't add 'For repeatedly murdering people.'

He was trying not to think about the most recent victim, specifically. Instead, he allowed himself to be distracted by a somewhat sincere thank you from Voldemort.

"…Drumlanrig was your fault, by the way," he said in English, rewarded with a hair pull.

The reality of the night was demolished under the weight of the Dark Lord steadily undoing his shirt buttons.