(TW: Self-harm.)

Darker Things, Lily Kershaw

I worry about you in the light of day
'Cause you don't know who you are when all your demons go away
And you say you hate the way your mind makes you feel about
All the darker things in your life, I feel you now, I can feel you

Don't cry my one
We've only got so much time under the sun
Don't cry my dear
You've only got so much time here

He hadn't slept. Had sort of rested, nothing close to enough. Tom dragged them out of bed past midnight and left Crux asleep—slumped over his knees, cigarette butts scattered all over the floor—for the world's fastest refresh in the bathroom.

Relieved to find his Horcrux still asleep when he was done. He sat on the edge of the four-poster with his elbows propped on his knees, and he watched Crux.

Tom had expected Cassiopeia sooner, didn't think his head would hit the pillow before she kicked the door down, but she didn't crash into the room until nearly two in the morning. Shocked Crux to standing until he fell right back down.

"What the fuck?" He'd shuffled closer to Harry before he got his bearings and stopped in the middle of the room.

Cassiopeia sniffed the air and said, "That's his blood?" Pointing at Crux and closing the door behind her.

"Yeah. He tried to get it out," Harry said, still sitting at the end of the bed.

"…Get what out?"

"The Squib snake."

She sat down heavily in one of two armchairs. The dying embers in the fireplace the only light.

No one said anything, and Harry searched for words. Unsuccessfully.

"…Squibbed?" Cassiopeia eventually said, quiet, unmoving in the dark.

"It was Voldemort's idea." Harry didn't like the way the excuse felt lame on his tongue.

Crux thought so, too, slowly turning to face him and tilting his head like a confused dog.

"His idea?' Cassiopeia whispered. He had to strain to hear her.

"I'd say it was everyone's fun idea of a great time," Crux said, "A collaboration? Go team?" He worked his way to his feet, exhaling heavily through his nose before it became a humourless laugh. "Saving the world together like heroes. I'm going to piss don't follow me."

"…Leave the door open," Harry said.

"Pervert? No."

"Crux-"

"You wanna watch me piss?"

"No, there's-"

"Sure, whatever you say, piss guy." Crux shut the bathroom door.

"I- I'm not understanding… A few things here," Cassiopeia said once Harry's Horcrux was gone, "Tom… Is he, in there?"

"Yeah. He's not gone. I mean, Crux said he's not gone. He's just… Not coming out?"

"Jesus Christ, Harry. Jesus Christ." She scoffed a shocked laugh into her hands, "What the fuck are we going to do now? I have so many vampires at Nurmengard waiting to be addressed by Voldemort? The competition? That starts in nine days? Narcissa tells me Severus is dead, so there's no headmaster? And Nagini? Reed? Ironw-"

"Cassiopeia I am so fucking aware."

"The extensions on the school will at least be completed on schedule. Well, on third schedule but Rookwood seems confident-"

"I can't talk about this right now."

"Yeah. Okay. I get talkative when I'm fucking terrified."

"Well-"

Cassiopeia shot out of her seat and squawked, "I smell a lot of blood," before she blasted the bathroom open with a Bombarda.

On the tiles, gasping, stabbing himself repeatedly under his rib cage with a pair of scissors, fishing with the other hand. Up to his knuckles. Ripping at his skin, tearing the wounds wider, wild-eyed, blind-staring at the ceiling.

Harry didn't move, stood in the doorway to watch crimson pool on emerald tiles under bright light. The desperate, unhinged way Crux fought his hand in deeper, though his arms shook relentlessly, almost useless, shivering like he was freezing, teeth chattering.

Pale.

Cassiopeia stopped him with a stunner, and Harry and the vampire blinked at each other with open mouths. Again, she moved first, stopped the bleeding with her fangs fully bared, nostrils flaring, black eyes bulging.

"Get Lydia or do this, yeah? Can you do that?"

"Uhh," Harry's legs and hands were moving, Tom's doing, wand drawn, Parseltongue incantations closing the multitude of wounds on the Dark Lord's stomach and chest.

He'd punched through bone with the scissors. A few lower ribs cracked. He didn't need to check to know there would be internal bleeding. Something he needed Lydia for. A thin, narrow pair of scissors, Tom decided. Confirmed when he removed them from his bloodied fist.

Cassiopeia was already gone, and he hadn't noticed. Watching Crux intently until the vampire's stun fell off.

When it did, he went straight for the scissors—sprung off the floor in far too nimble a way—startling Harry backwards until Tom stunned Crux again.

Tom flipped him so that he was face-up, and Harry still wasn't fully comprehending the scene, blood everywhere, slipping and sliding on slick tiles. More disconcerted with each passing heartbeat with the way Crux went entirely blind. Everything but his goal invisible. Nothing stood in his way if he couldn't see it.

'He did that so fast?' Harry thought, more to himself.

He'd had the idea to remove sharp objects in the same way he thought about his new responsibilities. He'd added it to the list. Abstract and later, not quite as pressing, he'd thought, as the rest of it. While he'd known that Crux would want the Squib snake out, he hadn't imagined—really imagined—his Horcrux attempting to cut it out. Dreams were one thing, waking hours another.

Hindsight.

Harry's Horcrux was as much a danger to himself—to the Dark Lord—as he was anyone else. More so.

Tom's train of thought was as anxiety-inducing as the blood on his hands.

'It would be for the best; we simply do not have the time to-'

'To what? To what? Say it.'

'To help him the way you desire. I am sorry. He may be a lost cause. He should be restrained and sedated until we can understand-'

Harry squawked an incredulous laugh, humourless, bewildered, 'Tom. No.'

'If there was anything to be done, Harry, it was due long ago.'

"No?" He said in Parseltongue, and when he realised it had come out a question, he repeated it in English, "No."

"Harry-"

"Look at his face?" He snapped, "How can you not- Tom. We're not doing that. That's…" Harry tried to find the words to explain why it was unforgivable, but Tom was rigid in the thought.

Tom only saw the rage-filled hate on Crux's frozen face. Prominent, but not the only sign. Tears streamed from the corners of dark red eyes in spite of the stun. Fear swimming in the crimson. Teeth bared; lips curled. Terrified. Desperate. Furious.

Harry knew him. Knew that feeling. Knew the feeling, but suspected he didn't understand the depth.

"No." Harry stood and levitated Crux to the bed, tracking blood everywhere, careful not to slip. Adrenaline-induced haze. Familiar.

He tried to get Calming Draughts through the Dark Lord's clenched teeth, but he had no idea how much success he'd had.

When Lydia and Cassiopeia returned, he heard his voice tell them about his punctured ribs, internal bleeding, and fractured mental state, before he let himself slip to the floor. Sitting down before he fell.

'…Harry-'

'Tom, I love you, but you're not getting it.'

'What more is there to underst-'

'I mean it. We're not doing that. We deal with the mess we made.'

Harry did have Crux sedated, but only temporarily. He'd been healed and left to sleep in the Dark Lord's bed. He hadn't left him there; he had sat in a plush green armchair and watched him while Tom assessed a range of situations.

Narcissa and Cassiopeia were in and out until the sun rose. Bringing letters and opinions. Suggestions for staff replacement in the face of the impending tournament. Updates on fruitless interrogations and raids.

Tom thought it didn't matter an iota whether the raids were insubstantial. Intensely confident that assorted, freshly dead animals were all they would need to find Ironwood's weaknesses. Harry was thinking more about the fact that nothing had worked out so far, and listening to Ironwood was different than finding a way to deal with Reed in a manner that didn't result in her death.

Cassiopeia had wanted to interrogate him, but he'd shooed her off.

Her questions were loaded and long-winded.

He was exhausted.

The potions for his Horcrux had joined his own stock in the bathroom and he couldn't imagine an opportunity to take them. A burning hollowed out need. Satisfying it would put him at a mental disadvantage, and he couldn't afford it.

He couldn't sleep either.

Harry let his Horcrux wake for breakfast. He'd had Narcissa outdo herself with the spread in an effort to get as much food into the Dark Lord as possible before something inevitably went wrong. Served in a private dining room.

Muttering Parseltongue in his sleep despite heavy sedation. Healed and cleaned and… Peaceful, when he was unconscious. If you ignored the tone of his words. Begging for freedom and demanding everyone die.

Bolt upright and then falling out of bed when Harry woke him. Scrambling with the sheets like they were an enemy and taking them to the floor.

"…Good morning."

Panting and searching the room for an answer, frowning harder, "What the fuck?"

"You tried to cut the Squib snake out."

"Did it work?"

"Not even close, but you almost punctured his heart."

"…Oh." Crux kicked him in the shin with little warning, and the urge to kick him in the head in return was colossal, sweat prickling on the back of his neck as the sharp pain shot up his leg.

Instead, he turned, flared his nostrils at the wall, hands clenched like his teeth, and ground out, "Breakfast."

Crux was movable when it came to food, Harry was realising. He could be bribed with it. Pulled himself off the floor using the four-poster and looked at Harry like he was the one slowing the whole operation.

He was rapidly improving on his legs. Didn't trip once on the way to the dining room, though he held the wall for a good portion. If he had to, he could probably run.

Crux piled his plate when he sat down at the round table and refused to look at Harry. Standard. He was having a harder time containing his irritated and swelling anger without sleep. Without bliss. Creeping up his throat and squeezing till he was glaring at his empty plate.

But he had a plan, and he needed to stick to it because he had nothing else.

"…We've made some time today for you to do… I don't know. Something you want to do. For a couple of hours."

Crux scowled, sausage hanging out of his mouth, making his eyebrows wiggle. Anger fighting with sausage. "What kind of sausages are these?"

"I don't know? Beef?"

"What do you mean 'Something I want to do?'"

"I mean what I said," Harry picked up some thick-cut toast and supposed he had to feed himself, as well, though his appetite had been shot out.

"I want to kill everyone and dismantle Morty's empire?" He grinned around his food, a flash of a thing, and despite the crippling anxiety induced rage, Harry's lip twitched.

"Not that."

"Bullshit."

"If you're desperate to kill someone, we have Remus."

Crux laughed, loud, and let his sausage fall out. "What good would that do?"

"I dunno, closure? Revenge? You killed Snape and Pettigrew?"

"How are we so different, were you loved as a child or something? I don't give a shit about Remus. Coward. He did nothing. Nothing. So let him rot doing nothing in the cells till I've got nothing better to do." Sausage back in his mouth, periodically removed to stare in besotted disbelief.

"What do you want then?"

"I wanna go to the beach and take drugs. Good drugs. Drugs that might kill me."

Tom was already bristling at the logistics, but Harry had decided it was as good a plan as any.

"It's snowing," he said, displaying the largest issue first.

"So? Let's go to… I dunno. Where's not winter?"

'Would Narcissa have a Portkey? For a… Beach?' Harry wondered, and Tom fought his disagreement.

"Give me your arm," Tom told Crux. Tone short.

He gave the Dark Mark anyway, smirking and on his third sausage. Harry drew the Snakewood wand to call Narcissa and ask her if she could get them to the beach.

And she surprised him by having a way. A Portkey to the Seychelles, she said. A house there that had belonged to Lucius' mother, handed to Narcissa when she married in.

Essentially empty with no staff to speak of. House-elves moved to the Malfoy manor. The remaining furniture was dressed in white sheets and kept under stasis charms. Sunlight beamed through still-open curtains. Near the middle of the day.

Too warm in his robes and under a Lethifold, so he let Bed Sheet off—he immediately shot off into the house, up a wide light-wood staircase and out of view—and shrugged his outer layer onto the floor after emptying his pockets.

Harry had wanted Narcissa to come with them, a chaperone of sorts, but she was far too busy to misplace. Critical elsewhere.

Cassiopeia was a vampire so a day trip to the Seychelles wasn't applicable.

The list of people who knew the Dark Lord was his Horcrux, that they had fused, was incredibly short. Harry wanted to keep it that way. But that decreased utility a great deal.

In the end he'd plucked Lydia from her post and decided whatever risk he took by displacing the healer was outweighed by the risk of taking Crux to the beach and giving him Grave Dust.

A cigarette hung from Crux's mouth when they'd Portkeyed. The ash fell when they landed, jarred off the end to pepper the light hardwood floors.

"Drugs?" Dark red eyes trained on Harry's pockets.

The house was situated right by the water; he could see glimpses through the circular glass in the powder-blue front door. Immaculate crystalline ocean lapping at white sand.

Harry was so fucking tired.

He'd told Lydia what they were doing before they'd left, and she silently objected with her face. She was to ensure that they didn't kill each other, that Crux didn't hurt himself, and to overall keep the chaos to a minimum.

Because he was taking drugs too. Tom was on the fence, but if you asked Harry, it was overdue. He was going to lay in the sun with his feet in the water, let Lydia deal with the madness of a Squibbed, drugged, insane Horcrux, and pretend none of it was real.

He'd brought two of the potions containing the Dark Lord's blood, but he wasn't sure if he was brave enough to use them. Laying at the water's edge semi-conscious was one thing. Leaving Lydia entirely alone with Crux was another. He was far too slippery for Harry to really relax.

"He might mess with you," Harry told Lydia, searching for the words to accurately describe his Horcrux, "Don't underestimate him."

"Rude to talk about someone when they're right there." Crux blew smoke in Harry's direction, but he was swaying on the spot too far from him to reach his target.

"I did see the aftermath of this morning's bathroom incident," Lydia had brought a bag of medical supplies and Harry thought that was a good idea.

"I was just taking a piss."

"With a pair of scissors." Harry snapped, then he flinched and turned back to the healer.

Crux stepped close, jarring in his speed, and whispered, "You shouldn't have put that snake on me." He smelt like cigarettes and blood. "Drugs."

"You put it under your tongue," Harry couldn't help whispering back, leaning in.

"I know what to do with it."

He fished the pouch from his pants pocket and gave his Horcrux a clump of the glittering drug.

He didn't take it immediately; instead, he waggled his eyebrows at the healer and backed toward the front door. Smirking, winking as he struggled with the doorknob—Stumbling out onto the path once he got it open.

"Harry!" Crux barked once he was outside, laughing and leaving them in the house.

Lydia followed first, bag floating behind her, judging eyes that Harry ignored.

"Are you seeing this?!"

Harry was seeing this. Like a postcard, an unreality. Massive grey boulders shaped by wind and waves of perfectly turquoise water. Palm trees skirted the medium-sized beach house. A dock ran from the side porch to the ocean's edge, no boats tied to the posts. A bright, clear sky disrupted only by thick white blooming clouds sat on the horizon.

Alone entirely on the beach.

Crux popped the Grave Dust in his mouth and almost instantly collapsed into the powder-like sand—cackling and rolling slowly down the slight slope.

Harry gave Lydia a look that suggested she should not fuck this up, before he took his own rock of Grave Dust, disintegrating under his tongue.

Immediate and expected, the rush of high, but it sent him to his knees anyway, snorting giggles as he crawled for the water—light glowing on the surface and rising like golden smoke. Warm, soft grains tickled between his fingers, up his wrists. Shirt off—when did he do that? He lay face-down in the fluff, drinking the warmth. Fluffy dust. A glow moulded to his chest.

He wasn't going to breathe in but for some reason, the desire to inhale sand was prominent.

Someone talking behind him, and in front of him. He lifted his head to find a red-eyed demon. Beckoning him towards the water and not upright in any capacity.

The perfect coolness of the ocean had him laughing—if he'd stopped at all—golden-blue twinkling in the sun, swallowing his hands, lapping up his arms. Salty when he put his face in it.

Lydia already corralling Crux away from the water's edge.

Harry supposed his Horcrux couldn't swim. He tried to ask, and more laughter bubbled out.

"Howcomethere'sstuffwaftingoffyourskinandnotmine?"

He cackled because Crux's words meant nothing. He tried to replay them in his head and they didn't make any sense at all.

"Harry?" That word seemed familiar.

Crux was half in the water, one leg in and one out, kneeling and staring down at him—laying with his head in the gentle waves, dunking his ears, not helping his inability to understand language.

"Doesitfeelthesameforyou?" The Dark Lord was pretty with red eyes and a laughing face. Harry felt like he could see him in there, and a burp of anxious sadness threatened to swallow him.

He tried to respond, to ask Crux to repeat, to ask him why he wasn't speaking English. Words refusing exit.

"Whydoyoulooklikeyou'regonnacry?"

Harry shook his head, ears full of water. Trying to hang on to the niceness of the cool with some strange pit growing in his chest.

Crux's eyes were terrible, spectacular things in the sunlight. Or maybe it was the drugs. Either way they'd become portals that he couldn't understand.

"I… Can't?" as many words as he could manage.

He wanted to shoo Crux away but he was closer still. Harry couldn't get his breathing under control, and he hadn't realised how hard it was to look at his face.

"Lydiahe'sfreakingout?"

Harry focused on the green steaming from his skin, cascading off his face and forming patterns against brilliant blue.

"Abadtripisnotoutsidetherealmofpossibility."

He'd forgotten Lydia was there. It was like they were speaking a dialect he'd never heard. Similar to English, fragments of words familiar, but he couldn't understand.

"What?" Harry said. Even his own words, wrong.

He wanted to be entirely in the water, and he wanted the yawning panic to stop.

"Idon'tfindthisfunactuallyLegBoy," leaning so close that Harry could smell his breath. Cigarettes and blood and winter and war and sadness.

"What?" Harry rubbed his face furiously with salt water and again willed them away from him without words.

Then he realised that he'd dumped an amount of salt-water and sand in his eyes. Making everything considerably worse. "What?"

"Areyourfeelingstoobigforyourhead?Thathappenstometoo," Crux had blessedly leaned back. For some reason Harry couldn't crawl any further into the surf.

Harry thought it was almost funny how the yawning grief felt like collapsing wet sand in his chest. Falling inward. Sinkhole of instability.

"HeybreathePrincesswhatthefuckgetagrip?"

"Get… Away," swinging his arms at nothing.

"Ohthere'sagoodidea?CanIreally?Goaway?"

"No." He couldn't tell where Lydia was, didn't bother to move his head and find out.

"Harrywhyisyourshirtoff?"

"Ithinkitwouldbebesttobringhimbacktothehouseandpreparetoleave."

"No?Lydiafuckoffyougoinside."

Limbs very much not cooperating, fear creeping up the walls of the freshly opened pit under his ribs. A certainty that he was going to invariably fuck it all up. That the Dark Lord, Ginny, Nagini, Reed… The rest of the world… He'd lose them and it would be their fault.

The four of them flailing and failing to critical mass.

"Harrybenormal."

More frustrated by the moment at his lack of comprehension.

"…AreyoureallygoingtofreakoutsohardthatIhaveto-"

The sky was so blue-green that he had to squeeze his eyes shut. Irritated to weeping by salt and sand.

"I'mdoingthisbecauseyoucan'tgetagripnotbecauseIwanttoandhavebeenthinkingaboutit."

Crux's hand on his chest, and that didn't make any sense at all. Less sense than the gibberish coming out of his mouth.

Bliss like a storm, billowing like a cloudburst—lifting the grief on an updraft and shocking the fear out of him. Confusion sucker-punched into submission. Language wrangled.

"Just like you to make this all about you," Crux said, finally comprehensible. Then he gasped. "What- this doesn't feel… The same," digging his fingers, dragging them down. "Is this- for me, it felt... Huh."

Instantly soothed, drug and bliss looped through the other to form a gorgeous, buttery latticework in his chest and head. "What do you mean."

Crux didn't answer. He dropped his face on Harry's stomach and bit down. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to startle his head out of the water—sucking and biting and whining, causing an instant reaction that spread from his gut to his cock.

Tentatively, Harry took the back of Crux's neck in hand and threaded his fingers through wet, sandy hair.

Warm inside and out.

Harry's Horcrux groaned, vibrating his mouthful, his face pressed against him so that he couldn't be breathing. Both arms draped over Harry's abdomen, rolling his bare wrists.

Crux turned to look at him and released his teeth, but didn't break contact. Red eyes hooded and blazing. Limp in Harry's grip. The magic leaking from his skin engulfed Crux, too, as though he were ablaze in emerald, smoke-like flame.

"I told you not to… Touch me."

"You're touching me?"

"…This feels- so good."

"Yeah." Harry kept stroking his hair and watched his eyes flutter shut before he could no longer hold his head up, dropping it back in the water.

"You were freaking out," Crux said, muttering against the trail of hair that ran the middle of Harry's chest, "So I… Had to."

"You didn't have to. But thank you." Eyes irresistibly closed, dragged into euphoric sleep.