Mercy, Dotan

Mercy, mercy, mercy,
Can you save me from the darkness I knew?
Scars that you left
Growing me old
Holding my breath
Out in the cold
Mercy, mercy, mercy,
Have mercy on me

Your darkest ghosts are hard to leave
Like echoes as they follow me
But all I do is run for cover
Every time you pull me under
So let me go, I'm begging, please

"Well, you know my opinion on the matter. We can keep going in circles, and I can keep saying the wrong thing until you tell me all of it," Cassiopeia said, sitting cross-legged in an armchair.

He shook his head and swirled his glass. Nagini sat at his feet, tearing pages from an old book she'd stolen from the Malfoy Library.

"If I told you, you would know," He said to the vampire after watching Nagini for a moment, "The Ministry? The trial? Word, please."

"Scrimgeour is dead. Right on cue," she opened her jaw wide, unconsciously, like a snake unhinging, fangs flashing.

Something she did when she was quite hungry. He made a note of it.

"Thicknesse was Imperioed last night. I haven't heard anything about moving the trial date, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do now. Not really getting into the part where he's been a fugitive for nearly a month…" She gave him a pointed look, telling him without telling him that it was far too much effort.

"And the Order?" He asked, sipping the wine he'd nursed for over an hour. Nagini had nearly shredded the entire book and had begun tearing the pages into thin strips.

"No word. Complete reshuffle on their safe houses. Gone, basically. Dumbledore is the only one who's daring to walk about. It would be safe to assume… That he would show up at the trial, right?"

"I would be shocked if he did not."

"So… I- Why bother with the trial? Why not just keep him here? Who gives a shit if he's wanted?" She pressed.

He shot Cassiopeia a look when she questioned him.

"He will be more useful at the school," he said as Nagini turned to look at him.

It sat them up when they woke, mechanically taking a Calming Draught as Harry's thoughts raced.

"Trial? Were they talking about me? Like a trial at the Ministry? For me?" Harry paused momentarily but not long enough for it to answer, "He wants me back at Hogwarts?"

'I would say you are correct in your assumptions,' it interrupted him in his head when it became clear that he wasn't going to stop talking, 'We need to cast.'

That thought knocked the others out of Harry's head. The last time they'd done it they'd been half mad with the ache; he'd cast on instinct, their strange fragile magical core somehow withstanding it. He'd become afraid of it, his magic. One wrong move and he could break it, trapped again with the thing in his head while they both scrambled like rabid animals nothing but panic…

'Harry,' it said when he began spiralling.

It forced his breath level as their bedroom door pushed inward.

"Oh fantastic, you're up at two in the morning," Cassiopeia said, levitating a tray of food and potions into the room.

Harry felt it baulk at the fact that she seemed to dislike it too, after what they'd done in the Great Hall.

"Tom needs to see you. In the morning. When the sun is up, I mean. Nagini will collect you. I wouldn't dilly-dally around the mansion. Any questions?"

"Uh… It-" Harry had begun to say, 'it wants to cast,' but the words caught in his throat, his mouth closing unbidden.

He realised he'd been about to call it 'it' out loud. It didn't say anything to him, but Harry could feel that it flinched every time he even thought the word.

'I- it doesn't feel- calling you Tom… It makes it…' He fought to find words that didn't make him feel unreasonably guilty.

'I understand. I do not expect it of you.'

For some reason that made Harry feel worse.

"We need to cast," he said instead, and Cassiopeia looked at him like he was a five-year-old who'd just asked to pee on a road trip.

"Ugh, fine, yes, it will be arranged. Can it wait till tomorrow night?"

"Yes," it said, narrowing their eyes.

She nodded sharply and left them alone. Harry collected the tray and sat it on the bed, but they didn't touch it. Harry had never seen the main dish before. It was extravagant. Unidentifiable. There was fruit on the side though, and he decided that he'd eat that if he ate. Everything they brought him was under a Stasis Charm, which was for the best.

'What do you think he meant… When he said that I had rendered myself irredeemable?' It asked him.

Harry knew it was stuck on what the Dark Lord had said, it had thought about it over and over, though it hadn't asked him his opinion on it.

"He could easily have been talking to me," Harry said out loud.

'No.'

"Well, I- I mean you know more than me, so. I thought he was talking to me."

Harry pushed the food in the bowl with the silver fork, absently trying to recognize an ingredient, "It's weird that she calls him Tom, still…" Harry thought about the dream that they hadn't even discussed, where Cassiopeia had tried to claw the Dark Lord's eyes out after he called her a mudblood.

"So does Nagini," it said out loud.

"Why are they here? It seems like- like they love him. Like they care about him. Like he feels the same way about them… Dumbledore made it seem like he was just- incapable of that," Harry formed one of the questions that rattled in his head.

'Ah, Dumbledore. Or as we know him: 'The Fount of Purest Truth.''

"So, it's not true then? He does care about them?"

'…Yes,' it seemed like it wanted to say more.

There was a commotion outside the window, someone squealing, which made them both jump. It moved them to the window first, one eye pressed to the gap in the curtain. On the lawn not too far from his view on the fourth floor were eight people, one of them on the ground yelping while the others shifted foot to foot. Two of them he quickly recognized, Cassiopeia, with her wand raised, and Draco Malfoy rolling around under it. The others took slightly longer, far away and in the dark, but once he recognized Parkinson, he recognized most of the rest. Crabbe, Goyle, Zabini… The seventh and eighth he wasn't sure if he'd ever seen, two dark-haired girls, one shorter than the other.

The vampire let the blonde go and then shouted at them to run. Malfoy was the only one who did not hesitate as he scrambled to his feet and took off into the dark. The others followed when the vampire fired hexes at them.

'I- want to run,' Harry thought as he watched them.

"I wouldn't mind a fight," it muttered with his mouth.

Harry could see Nagini in his peripherals, but he couldn't bring his attention to her. There was too much blood. The siren of his heart in his ears was too loud. His vision tunnelled as he took in the full scope of what he'd done.

One of the bodies was at his feet. The other two bodies upstairs. The ring firmly clenched in his fist. He found that when he put it down, he felt fractured. This wasn't magic that was well-researched. Recorded. Studied. So, he hadn't known what to expect. His chest heaved as he stared at the man covered in blood, unrecognizable, bitten by Nagini repeatedly at Harry's command then killed with the Killing Curse.

Tom Riddle Senior.

He touched his hand dumbly to Nagini's head, not looking at her as he Disapparated, reappearing in the Gaunt house. He knelt on the floor and couldn't understand why he was weeping. He pried a floorboard loose and hesitated, swallowed, and then dropped the ring inside. All at once he felt broken, damaged.

Nagini had wrapped herself around his middle, squeezing as she whispered in his ear: "A little tepid pool, drying inward from the edge."

The dream shifted and he was standing in the Room of Requirement, alone, wand raised, an idea in his head that wouldn't leave him. It kept him awake at night. He'd done the research and learned that spell crafting was risky. He'd done more research and learned how it was done. He was willing to try anything.

He cast it slowly, deliberately.

As the ink-black agony tore through him, stripping his senses, and destroying his thoughts, he found that he liked the pain.

"I hate this," Harry snapped as they startled awake. It was quiet in his head, as close to absent as it could be.

The sun was rising, the sky purple when he looked out through the curtains. They'd slept for maybe two hours.

When Nagini came to collect them and lead them through the manor holding their hand, it was still quiet in his head. Harry could only feel snippets of what it felt though it was hiding as many of its thoughts as it could. Although those walls were harder to keep in place. What he could feel was dark and angry. He was sure there was fear, too, well-hidden but too familiar. He didn't ask who was supposed to speak to Voldemort as they came close to the dining room.

Nagini pulled him into the room with both hands, walking backwards. He noticed the furniture had been repaired. The strange tugging in his solar plexus brought him into the room along with the Maledictus, though the thing in his head said nothing about it. She sat him in the chair furthest from the Dark Lord. Voldemort himself was staring into his hands at the far end of the table, the muscles in his jaw worked as Nagini came to stand beside him to calm him with her magic, lighting both of their eyes. Only then did Voldemort look up at Harry.

"…Padfoot's place," the Dark Lord said.

"A trap," it said with Harry's mouth.

Voldemort's eyes narrowed, "Explain."

"Dumbledore told Harry last year that the property had been willed to him upon the death of his Godfather. He knew I was in his head and saw the prophecy. He was certainly present in the hall when we…" It trailed off, "He knows what has happened, and I suspect he was braced for it. The mention of 'Padfoot's place' in Ginny's letter was intentional. Orchestrated. The house is a trap. There have been no Order members there since the fourteenth of June, I am certain of it. They would not shelter in a house owned by Harry Potter."

Harry didn't even bother to stop it from talking. A savage anger would boil in him at the thought of the headmaster, and so, he found himself thinking that it was well and good that his trap was wasted.

"And is the Weasley in the Order?"

"No," they both spat, remembering Voldemort's end of the Vow.

It added, "She is under their guardianship outside her volition."

It was sneering with Harry's face, and he found he agreed with it. They hadn't spoken about its theory about Ginny's letter, but the fact that someone -probably the headmaster but possibly her family- had likely forced Ginny to write a trap into her letter made him feel ill. If they had her doing Order things, under the Order's roof…

"Please excuse me, he is about to have a panic attack," it stood up without being excused and walked them to the corridor before it let Harry fall to his knees.

'You have to make him understand she's not…' He'd been about to think 'not in the Order' but the truth was he didn't even know for sure. He didn't know what had happened after that night, what she'd been through, what she'd been told. Whether Dumbledore had told them the prophecy… That he was no promised Saviour; that there was no hero. At least not in him.

'Harry,' it was breathing for him but struggled as he flailed in the hallway, both of them gulping air like landed fish.

"Why would he do that… Why would he fabricate it -I can't… Explain it. Explain it to me. Why would he- if I'm not even CLOSE to- The prophecies are not even close they're- not even close Tom they're not even close to each other they're not even close… To what we are- I don't…" Harry felt a hand on the back of his neck, then the familiar, seeping cold of Nagini's magic.

The Dark Lord stood leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, looking down his nose in disgust.

Harry glared at him while they succumbed to the Maledictus entirely.

Nagini had returned them to their rooms once they'd been able to stand, long after Voldemort had slammed the doors on them.

He sat and picked absently at fruit afterwards, the prophecy and Ginny still looping in his thoughts. Not far behind them was Ron. Then the students he'd… Killed. Still nameless. The Ministry, the trial. The Minister, Scrimgeour, dead, probably for him, because the Dark Lord wanted him at Hogwarts for some reason-

'Harry.'

'Tom,' he'd thought it deliberately, wooden when he did it on purpose, "I can't take this," he'd said it before, but each time it felt truer.

Nagini had stayed in their room, looking for all the world like a short, bird-boned, thirty-something-year-old Indonesian woman, not a giant human-eating snake. When Harry had spoken, she'd looked up from her paper tearing and folding, tilting her head too far to one side as she met his eyes.

'How is she human?' Harry wondered in his head.

'I have the same question. Who should we ask, the Dark Lord Voldemort, the Bitch Vampire, or the Maledictus herself?'

'Alright point taken. No theories then?'

'My only observation is that it seems extremely new to her. She is fascinated by her fingers. Tearing up every book in the house. You've seen her move, how she behaves.'

'New like… How Voldemort looks…' Harry didn't have any words for that, more spooked by the man looking like a regular twenty- to thirty-year-old guy than he was by the snake face he'd become weirdly accustomed to.

'New like that, yes.'

'You think it's got something to do with us don't you,' Harry pressed, sensing the thought.

'Only a theory, nothing confirmed. Stop digging.'

'Well, what's the theory?' Harry dug.

'I have nothing solid.'

'Fine.'

As Harry walked them with leaden legs to the field, following Cassiopeia and Nagini through the dark, Narcissa and Draco following behind them, the thing in his head kept almost saying something. The pause before words kept punctuating his panic until he thought:

'What?'

'It's… Now that we-'

Harry could feel frustration and anger coming from it, but there was something else it was trying to hide. He felt it though. Shame. It didn't finish its thought, so the Boy Who Lived frowned all the way to the clearing where the Dark Lord stood, hooded and masked. Harry could only tell it was him because of the pulling, like a compass that pointed him in his direction. He pushed the thought away, instead looking at Nagini coiled at the Dark Lord's feet.

She came to Harry as he stood in the middle, Cassiopeia, Narcissa, And Draco took their places around them, Draco questioning Harry intensely with his eyes before tearing them away. The Dark Lord began casting and the others followed suit. Nagini unraveled and came to stand before him, taking his face in her hands, eyes glowing. Harry realised she was there to stabilize him as her cold magic steadied his breathing. It was an uneasy feeling, his muscles relaxing as though he had drowned.

As the wards solidified and they prepared to cast, it spoke again.

'By now… I hope you understand.'

It didn't allow him to question as the curse exploded from them.

Agony. Skull-splitting, fiery, all-encompassing. Worse than anything he'd ever felt; he had nothing to compare it to. He couldn't stop it once it started, panic ripping through him as he fell into the grass. Vision blacked out, sound swept into the storm of it, though he was certain he was howling. Nagini was lost in it, -Harry couldn't see her or feel her magic- the three of them held down and strangled by it.

Another sensation grew in his gut alongside it. One that blindsided him. A burning, angry pleasure. Not like he'd felt each time he'd cast it before; it didn't soothe him; it wasn't passive or gentle. A desire and a confusion built in him as he rocked in the grass, the pain still spitting blitz in every inch of him, too much for him to be conscious. Still, the want grew, aggressive, along with the pain.

When it stopped, after an age, he curled into a ball; nauseous, confused, ashamed and aroused.

He'd refused to be moved from the grass, curled in the fetal position, jaw locked tight. Voldemort had Disapparated with a crack, taking a stumbling Nagini with him. Narcissa and Draco had left as well, choosing to walk back to the manor while Cassiopeia grew impatient. Harry thought about asking it what exactly that was, but all at once he already knew, and he didn't want to know. He didn't want to think about this being the new 'normal', that every five-ish days he would have to feel… That.

Cassiopeia Apparated them to the gates and then kicked him in the leg when he still refused to get up. He rolled instead, onto his back; splayed out and glaring at the stars.

"He really should just kill me," Harry muttered, more to the thing in his head, but Cassiopeia exclaimed:

"Right?! That's what I've been saying!"

(AN: Some of you are confused and have told me so. It's intentional, you're confused because Harry is. Unfortunately, he's an idiot please stand by.)