With the Devil I'm Going Down, Steelfeather
Heaven is such a simple hell
It's a measure of how far we fell
As I try to get back up, I slip further, I'll never be clean enough
It's too late, it's too late now
With the Devil, I'm goin' down
With the Devil, I'm goin' down
The purest pieces are left behind
And I made choices, and here they lie
Oh, I promise I tried, I promise I tried, I promise I tried
It's too late, it's too late now
With the Devil, I'm goin' down
With the Devil, I'm goin' down
They'd slept in the house with the green wards—or Harry did, like the dead—awoken before the sun to Portkey to Nurmengard—thrown into the Arctic when the Dark Lord unravelled them. A second hot shower hadn't helped, and he felt like frozen shit until after mid-morning.
He'd marked another hundred before breakfast, then demanded they stop for food. Voldemort was quiet, as was Harry's Horcrux. So was Harry himself, a reverberating ring in his head, buzzing his thoughts to insignificance. Dazed. He didn't think he was in shock; it felt deeper. Less superficial, more mind-altering. Not the first time he'd felt the whisper of it, but absolutely the most significant.
By lunchtime, once the wave of effervescence hit and he'd thawed entirely, he was borderline manic. The Dark Lord spent the middle part of the day at his desk, writing while staring at the far wall—still employing the tactic to keep Crux blind—careful not to let Harry see it either.
"You know-" Harry didn't get to finish his sentence.
"Do not. If you're going to speak about the Horcrux, don't."
"How did you know I was going to-"
"I said don't."
"…Sure." In truth, he wasn't sure what he could say. 'Hey, you really should let my Horcrux fuse with you,' was not something he wanted to be true.
Something he knew Voldemort didn't want either. Harry snorted at the absurdity of the world's fate resting on their shoulders. That Crux was the solution.
"…What?" Voldemort put down his quill and turned the parchment over.
"It's just stupid. This is stupid. Us? Save the world? We're fucked." Harry laughed again, but it was more forlorn than he'd expected. "I need a drink."
"In that cupboard," he pointed, "two glasses," he returned to the parchment, and Harry rolled his eyes.
Tom summoned the whiskey and tumblers, shots before noon.
"You have an excellent mouth," Harry said in Parseltongue, smirking at the rim of his glass and pleased with the subject change.
His gaze was intense, but he didn't respond. Harry tried to glance at the parchment, but Voldemort smacked his palm on the fresh ink and narrowed his eyes.
"You don't take compliments well," he noted.
"…Tonight, we will be moving to Gwrych. In the morning, there will be a press conference. You will be on your best behaviour."
"My best behaviour?" Harry smirked again, whiskey burning, "Always am." Bouncing one knee rapidly. "…Can't believe I did that."
"You will let my Horcrux handle it." Serpent tongue—Harry wanted to think it was because his accent had gotten thick.
"Okay." He drained his glass and poured another.
"How do you… Feel?" The Dark Lord could have checked, but he hadn't—had avoided Harry's head and broaching the subject since they'd left the woods outside Little Hangleton.
He examined how he felt. An electrified kaleidoscope. Nothing standing out as prominent, equally intense—a hurricane. Thoughts and emotions thrown into a stunning mess in his head. "Alive. I feel alive."
Gwrych was expansive. Built on a slope, vast sweeping lawns not yet covered in snow. White brick walls, pristine in the evening glow.
Battlement walls surrounding half the castle—the main structure itself wasn't overly large, Harry thought, but Tom assumed the interior would be magically expanded. The same swimming green wards that encased the house near Hogsmeade swallowed Gwrych on a much larger scale. Almost disorientating to walk through.
Alone with the Dark Lord—though there were Death Eaters at the perimeter of the wards and standing in the grounds, gobsmacked as they passed—both unmasked. Joined at the arched entrance by Demetria and Narcissa. The former soured Harry's manic elation slightly. Narcissa bowed first, unphased by his face.
"My Lord," Demetria purred, bowing breasts first after staring for far too long.
He gave Narcissa a look, and he was surprised to see her return it. A shared 'Ew.' The Malfoy Matriarch cleared her face and gave Harry a sharp nod, holding the doors open for them to enter.
Though Demetria said she aimed to have the castle 'Comfortable' by Thursday, it seemed plenty comfortable for a Wednesday evening. Decadence bordering on ridiculous. Cream panelled walls, intricate gold filigree from floor to tall ceiling. Classic paintings of angels and cherubs big enough to walk into hung high on the walls.
Ornate cabinets dressed with porcelain bowls and lit candelabras, floors covered in plush Persian carpets. Two fireplaces, one at either end of the long, wide entrance hall. Freshly lit—burning birch logs. Three colossal chandeliers. Massive gold framed mirrors interspersed on both sides of the room.
Demetria was talking, something, something ancient castle history. Something, something dinner.
Voldemort managed to swallow the room and draw Harry's attention. Particularly his mouth. Curled in a false smile, making his pulse race. The Dark Lord nodded where appropriate, but Harry couldn't tell if he was really listening.
"Narcissa, show him to his quarters," Voldemort said, and Harry took it to mean Demetria would be showing the Dark Lord his quarters.
So he stopped walking and narrowed his eyes, both at the idea of separate quarters and Voldemort leaving his sight with the most lecherous woman he'd ever laid eyes on.
'You're funny.' Tom's inner monologue told him, '…Higher odds he would kill her than fuck her. Higher odds he would suddenly transform into a giant purple toad than fuck her.' He added when Harry was unimpressed.
'Still… What if she tries something? Like a love potion? Or a spell?' Harry thought, then he said in Parseltongue, "Don't eat anything she gives you."
Voldemort smiled, slow and genuine, creeping onto his face in stages until he was chuckling, "I will be on guard."
"Seriously, she's up to something."
"They are all up to something. Go."
Harry followed Narcissa begrudgingly, occupying himself with Bed Sheet, chatting gibberish at him so that he purred on his ears and distracted him from the snap of the thread that bound him to the Dark Lord.
Distracted him from the night he'd had—bizarre and gut-wrenching and violent and beautiful.
Tom had been monitoring his thoughts like a life support system, but he didn't need overmuch support. Only required to keep him from falling too deep into the fresh memories and cackling like he'd gone insane.
"How are you, Narcissa," Tom had asked to draw Harry further from his thoughts.
She walked fast, in combats, hair tied back as usual. Sterner than normal—a feat—and so he assumed that she wasn't very fine. Her husband on the list of kidnapped.
"I'm sorry about the wards," Harry muttered.
She opened and closed her mouth, frowning. She'd taken him up wide stairs and stopped outside an obscenely tall door.
"Your quarters. You will find everything you need inside. There are house elves in residence if you require anything else." She gave him another half bow, and Tom inhaled it; grinning, he nodded and shut the room.
Harry had thanked her before Tom snapped the door closed.
No instruction given, something he'd grown to expect.
His bedroom was as luxe as the rest of the estate. Dark blue walls, black crushed velvet couches, hardwood floors. A four-poster bed large enough for eight people to sleep comfortably. Black curtains. A lit marble fireplace.
An adjoining bathroom in the same colours. A free-standing sink with gold legs. Oval framed mirror above a shelf cut into the wall—containing every potion and producthe regularly used.
The huge wardrobe in his room was stocked to the brim as well.
He snooped in every drawer and cupboard and waited for something. Night fell properly outside his large oval windows.
Bed Sheet had come off his shoulders to snoop along with him, although he found the ceiling more interesting than the cupboards, twisting above his head around yet another chandelier.
Harry collapsed on the bed to watch him. He inhaled until his chest hurt, then held it.
'I thought Crux would be in my head straight away after… After that,' he thought. Unable to pretend he wasn't curious.
'I have no idea,' Tom thought in response, 'He is unpredictable.'
'Understatement. You don't think Demetria got him, do you?' Revolted at the thought.
'I strongly doubt it.'
'You don't think we're actually staying in separate rooms? …Did she say something about a dinner?'
'I do not think so. She did—tomorrow night. It seems as though he has made his intentions to reveal his face clear, at least to Narcissa and Demetria. The press conference to reveal himself to the Wizarding world, the dinner for his closest followers and a number of Ministry officials.'
'I'm glad you pay attention,' Harry thought, pleased with the way he almost squirmed under the almost compliment, 'And you're really hot. And smart.'
Tom spluttered a snort and thought, 'I know.' Then, "Thank you," aloud.
"When Crux said that, I thought… But then, the more I thought about it… I didn't- I just did. And I wanted to. Am I insane?" In Parseltongue to keep himself mostly steady.
"You are divine."
He wasn't collected by Narcissa as expected.
The Dark Lord entered his thoughts through the thread and examined them before he demanded, 'Downstairs.'
Harry had had another bath—with not much else to do—and changed into a gold-trimmed set of black robes. Fur-lined on the inside. A relatively chubby Lethifold cooing eldritch gibberish on his shoulders.
Almost twenty-four hours since he'd decimated the Dursleys and he hadn't even needed a Calming Draught. The shock manageable, the intense shift in his head almost predictable. Mild brain-scrambling discomfort that he didn't much mind. The nature of the murders caught in his head in a rapidly less confronting way.
He caught himself smirking about it repeatedly through the evening, grinning at the ceiling, then at the bathroom wall, then as he took himself downstairs as requested. He wandered in what felt like the right direction until the thread that bound him to Voldemort snap together like a magnet showing true north.
Harry found the Dark Lord in an overlarge sitting room, dressed in the same gold and cream as the entrance hall. He had a tumbler of amber alcohol in his hand, hitting the same key repeatedly on the white piano he stood over.
"…Does my Horcrux," Harry began wondering aloud, caught the question, then decided he wanted to ask it anyway, "When I'm not with you, does he still… Drive you insane?"
"He takes your cause very seriously." The Dark Lord scoffed a laugh at his own words and drained his glass.
Harry noted the 'he', and so did Voldemort, flinching then scowling, pouring himself another drink. Light under his skin, his hands and throat lit from within. He paused to close his eyes and inhale—rolled his neck and sighed.
The light died before he spoke again, "It is impressed with you," muttered as he poured a drink for Harry.
He collapsed into a plush armchair and Voldemort did the same—with more grace, face exposed. No matter how often he'd seen him without a mask it still closed his windpipe. The Dark Lord looked tired—dark circles under bright eyes—but his cheeks were less sunken, slightly more colour to him.
"It was his idea," Harry said, sipping whiskey instead of asking the Dark Lord why his Horcrux hadn't been in his head since.
Narcissa's knock prevented the question entirely.
Lydia followed Narcissa in when Voldemort flicked his wrist to open the door. A small trunk levitated beside her—set down on a small coffee table. Both women bowed, and before the Malfoy Matriarch left the room, she hesitated, then asked:
"…Will it be painful?"
Harry didn't know what she was talking about, but his eyebrows raised regardless. He watched Voldemort, and nothing was clear in his expression. Carefully blank, if a little fuzzy around the edges—drunk, Harry decided—his eyes intense despite it.
"No, Narcissa."
Her chest heaved with the sigh she let out, "Thank you, my Lord. I will bring them momentarily."
Harry remembered—assisted by Tom—that he'd be marking students as Narcissa left.
Lydia took potions of different sizes from the chest and set them on a narrow side table in three sets of three. She gave Harry a small smile that was sadder than anything else.
"Have you heard from Cassiopeia?" Harry asked in Parseltongue.
"She is on her way back with the vampires. Complaining. She sends her regards," the Dark Lord responded automatically, and each time he did, Harry was flushed with success. Voldemort still spent an unreasonable amount of time reading letters in spite of the circumstances.
Tom was annoyed at not being allowed to read Cassiopeia's letter and still annoyed with the vampire in general for slipping Harry a love potion—something that Harry had had zero opportunity to punch her in the face about.
Narcissa didn't take long to return with her son, Zabini, Avalon, Eris, Ruby, Pollux, Crabbe, Daphne Greengrass, and to Harry's spluttering shock—spitting whiskey—Luna. Each bowed low, a round of "My Lord," before all eyes were on Harry.
"…Luna what are you doing here?" He couldn't help asking, ignoring for a moment that they looked incredibly morose.
Ruby in particular—uncharacteristically silent—Draco not far behind her. Pollux and Luna seemed the least phased by any of it, the hemomancer rapidly fidgeting with his puzzle, the blonde smiling airily as she answered:
"I was invited. I want to help. Draco told Pollux, and Pollux told me you were marking to help get Ginny and the others back."
Harry didn't know when Voldemort had informed Draco—probably Narcissa's doing, but he wasn't sure when he told her either—or how much they knew about what the Dark Lord knew. So he raised his eyebrows and tried not to laugh nonsensically.
"Yeah… Except three? Three of you are already marked?"
The Dark Lord was still in his seat, casual, drink in hand. He offered little more than a stare that made him feel naked. Harry was standing, unable to sit for long despite the almost late hour, bursts of energy sputtering through lethargy.
"That's where I come in," Lydia said, ushering Draco, Blaise, and Crabbe forward.
From what Harry understood, there was no easy way to remove the mark—charmed to bleed you out if you tried. As he thought about it, though, Tom's knowledge of the subject was clear in his head.
A potion only he knew how to brew would stop the bleeding. A good forty-eight hours on the brewing process. Making Tom's plan to cut his arm off with little more than a pocket full of Replenishers all the more insane.
Lydia took a jar of something from the trunk and told them to slather it all over their left arms. Draco took the jar first, looking ill.
"You said it won't hurt?" Harry asked the Dark Lord.
Struck over and over with a powerful need to be nearer to him, to watch him blink from a closer vantage, to snake his arms under his shirt and find the bliss he kept trying to keep to himself.
But Harry was in a room full of people so he swallowed it again and again, heat building in his middle.
"It will not hurt if Lydia treats them first." Voldemort's Parseltongue and the words Harry felt him not say had him stepping towards Zabini.
"They just need their arms cut off, yeah?" In English. He grabbed Zabini's left arm with both hands and burst through his skin with the curse before he reacted.
Screaming and flailing against him immediately, swinging his whole weight away from Harry so that they windmilled briefly. Everyone scattered. Harry made it as quick as he thought acceptable and crushed his arm off while he wailed and tried to kick him in the stomach.
Blood everywhere by the end of it, snapping apart with a wet crunch. Zabini fell into the wall, holding his mangled arm at the elbow, hyperventilating.
"Well, now, your friends will be far less apprehensive," Voldemort crooned, draining his glass and raising an eyebrow at Harry.
Harry, who'd managed to get himself covered in blood again.
"Are you going to get Reed back?" Ruby asked, not even looking at Zabini.
Harry took them in, and the only ones showing shock at his behaviour—apart from the Slytherin on the floor—were Greengrass and Crabbe.
"I'll find her," he said. Hopeful it was true.
She nodded and chewed her lip, her mop of brown hair hanging into her over-wide eyes.
Lydia asked Draco if he felt anything while jabbing his arm up to the elbow with a sharp needle-like tool. He said no, so she told him to: "Drink these three potions one after the other," then swiftly cut his arm off with a wandless Diffindo.
He made a hilarious noise that drowned out Zabini's shocked warbling. Voldemort silenced the Slytherin on the floor—Lydia was forcing potions down his throat while he dumbly refused to cooperate.
Crabbe watched Malfoy's stump arm slowly stop shooting a comical jet of blood and seal over. Both of them followed Blaise to the ground.
"Are you going to put that violence toward getting Ginny back, or just to get your vengeance," Eris had walked behind him to mutter.
"Bit of both," Harry said, regular volume. "Let me guess; she was your plus-one at Drumlanrig?"
"We are both terrible for her." Eris sounded so convicted Harry finally tore his eyes off the Dark Lord to look at him.
Eris seemed as though he was already at war. A far-off look in his eyes. Like he hadn't eaten or slept. In his Hogwarts robes, crumpled like he couldn't fix it with magic.
"Never disputed that, glad we can finally agree. I'm going to get her back," Harry said. He had a million things he wanted to say to them but no room to do it.
The necromancer flinched an eyebrow and turned away from him.
Crabbe was crying as though the amputation hurt. Harry knew it hadn't; Draco's bizarre noise hadn't been one of pain.
He marked Draco first. His right arm, since the left was gone—vanished off the floor by Lydia, along with Crabbe's and whatever had been left of Zabini's.
Though Draco was pale and bleary-eyed he had things he wanted to say, too. His lips pursed tight against the words as he took in the gold mark on his forearm. "…Okay." He eventually said.
"…I'm sorry about Pansy. And your dad."
Eyebrows knitted, he nodded sharply and stepped back, bowing at Voldemort once more as though it were simply knee-jerk.
Crabbe took the mark like a full-grown baby, whimpering and sweating as he offered his arm. Still sniffling afterwards though Harry knew that the mark didn't hurt either. Blaise was disassociated, staring through him as he marked his right arm. His lack of reaction bored Harry quickly, leaving him on the floor the instant the Parseltongue incantation left his mouth.
Pollux was next, intense eye contact when he extended his right arm—as though he'd sensed that Harry had decided in that instant to mark them all on that side, like his.
Tom binged on the feeling, loudly smitten in his head, bathing Harry in pride. He looked away from the fresh mark on Pollux's arm to smirk at Voldemort.
Harry wanted to talk to all of them, but Lydia was already shepherding Draco, Blaise, and Crabbe out. Not that there was much that he really dared to say in front of the Dark Lord. He figured it was mutual for his friends.
Luna smiled at him throughout marking her and inexplicably said, "Don't worry, Harry."
He'd just nodded—confused—in response.
"I'll assume you know I'm annoyed with you," Avalon said as she presented her arm aggressively.
"…Yeah, I figured."
"Good. You'll bring Ginny home. Reed, too, I suppose." The mark looked beautiful on her.
Tom thought it looked beautiful everywhere, but her dark skin made the gold skull and snake glitter.
"You have redeemed yourself a little because it is pretty. Connard." She watched the mark instead of Harry. He rolled his eyes at being called an asshole—automatically translated by Tom's constantly streaming thoughts.
She showed it to Eris, and he gave his right arm with a blank look.
Once the rest were marked, they were collected by Narcissa. Harry figured he would get time to talk, if not purely to put them to work.
He was directed out the door after them barely a minute later by the Dark Lord. Hall already empty.
"Is Demetria staying in the castle?" Harry asked instead of holding Voldemort's hand—an urge that nearly stopped him. Utterly bizarre and perfectly normal. The image of holding the Dark Lord's hand and skipping down the hallway forced a strangled laugh from his mouth, and he said, "Nothing," before Voldemort asked.
"…She is taking residence in the castle, yes."
"Did she come on to you?"
"If I had so much as winked, she would have taken her clothes off."
Harry made a face, revolted and angry. "That's disgusting."
"I raised my eyebrow at her, and she gave me a castle."
"You're the Dark Lord?" He flapped his arms, annoyed into English, "Just take it? Don't need to do anything with your eyebrows."
Voldemort chuckled, then stopped when light spilled from his palms.
'Why does that keep happening?' Harry wondered.
'I have theories,' Tom thought, his theories immediately visible. All came back to fusion and Harry's Horcrux.
He was taken to the Dark Lord's quarters and saw no one on the way, all the security around the wards and outside the building. He was relieved not to be genuinely using his room. The thought that the Dark Lord would dose him with potions and leave him to sleep alone made him nauseous.
Voldemort's quarters were opulent—a vast room. Panelled walls painted deep green, plush crushed-velvet armchairs by a black marble fireplace. One wall was a bookshelf, stretching to the ceiling beside two arched windows. His four-poster dressed in black.
Harry realised that he'd never been in Voldemort's main quarters, always taken somewhere else. He'd never laid eyes on the room he occupied in the Malfoy Manor.
On the mantle of the fireplace was a domed case. Two crossed wands floating inside it. His wand. His holly wand. And the Dark Lord's yew, dancing, tied with a silver thread.
"…When did you steal my wand?"
The Dark Lord removed Bed Sheet for him—a hand at his neck, mimicking the way Harry did it. The Lethifold obeyed, slightly grumpily—then shoved him back onto the bed. He tossed three potions on the bed and said, "Take them," then removed his own robes—he took the potions as commanded, not about to refuse the feeling the metallic potions gave. Voldemort kicked off his boots and then collapsed his full weight on him almost entirely unexpectedly, making Harry make an 'Oof,' noise.
"I stole it so long ago," the Dark Lord spoke into his shoulder, arms and legs tight around him. He took Harry's hand, put it on his head, and demanded, "Liquida Tenebris."
Harry did as he asked and would have chuckled if he didn't seem so fragile. He let the curse seep through Voldemort's hair—as gentle as he could be with it. He slipped an arm up under his shirt and traced his back without the darkness, something that made him twitch and spasm in Harry's grip. He didn't refuse it, though.
The Dark Lord made a sound part-way between a whimper and a frustrated growl when Tom began reciting Parseltongue in his ear.
"From childhood's hour, I have not been as others were," a delicate whisper, "I have not seen as others saw. I could not bring my passions from a common spring—from the same source I have not taken my sorrow."
Bliss stung Harry's fingertips, insides, and neck while the darkness hummed on his skin.
"…I can't do this." Voldemort didn't move or elaborate, so Tom continued.
"I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone, and all I loved—I loved alone. Then—in my childhood—in the dawn of a most stormy life—was drawn from every depth of good and ill, the mystery which binds me still."
The Dark Lord had finally relaxed, his death grip receding, still twitching as though he couldn't work out how to stay that way.
Brain fuzzed by the warmth, he vowed to force the Dark Lord into sleep. He tried to count the vertebrae of his spine—softly annoyed to feel them—and failed.
"From the torrent, or the fountain—from the red cliff of the mountain—from the sun that 'round me rolled in its autumn tint of gold—from the lightning in the sky, as it passed me flying by—from the thunder, and the storm—and the cloud that took the form—when the rest of Heaven was blue—of a demon in my view."
(AN: Tom recites 'Alone' by Edgar Allan Poe.)