Did My Time, Korn

Realize that I can never win
Sometimes feel like I have failed
Inside where do I begin?
My mind is laughing at me

Tell me why am I to blame?
Aren't we supposed to be the same?
That's why I will never tame
This thing that's burning in me

I am the one who chose my path
I am the one who couldn't last
I feel the life pulled from me
I feel the anger changing me

He'd found Cassiopeia on the map, in the Defense Against the Dark Arts office. He hesitated in the classroom at the bottom of the short stairs before she yelled: "Are you coming in?"

He shrugged the cloak off and ascended the stairs two at a time, ignoring the adrenaline.

"Uh, hey," Harry felt awkward addressing her, but Tom had left him irritatingly alone with it, largely amused and quiet.

"…Hello?" She sat down at her desk and Harry followed suit, sitting across from her.

She looked away from the plants she'd been arranging on an old -but new to the office- bookshelf that blocked the only window entirely. A tiny, summoned ball of light hovered above the decidedly unhappy-looking, unidentifiable plants, "They're supposed to look dead," she said when she saw him looking.

"Oh. Sure… I wanted to ask… You- if…" Harry paused, frowning, annoyed with Tom suddenly, 'Can you make yourself useful instead of grinning like an idiot.'

"He wants to be sure that Ginny will not be approached by Widrich or his apprentices before he has had time to offer her the choice," Tom said lazily, "That there will be no pressure from you, him, or the Dark Lord."

She didn't seem surprised, just nodded with a small smile, "You got it, boss."

"Why are you here, Cassiopeia? Planning on taking the Dark Mark?" Tom asked suddenly.

He tried for casual, but he knew Tom was itching to know what had changed. As Harry was. The words reminded him of his own mark, writhing on his right arm, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Imagine…" Her eyes glittered, "Taking the Dark Mark."

'She knows. Please stop talking about it. I feel sick.'

"So? Why are you here?" Tom pressed, ignoring him.

"You know, I had the same question for the Boy Who… Lived, The Chosen One. How unusual that he would be sitting here before me, asking to offer his little friend the darker side of the dark arts before Lord Voldemort himself does. That he should be whispering to the little fragment in his head in the serpent's tongue when he thinks no one can hear him… Ripping; Tearing the skin off his precious headmaster on the grounds-"

"Stop. Stop. Shut up," Harry was already out the door, heart hammering, hands shaking. She laughed after him, loud.

He threw the cloak over his head as he exited into the corridor and fought the nausea that was rising in waves, making his mouth water and his face numb.

'Those are good questions, Harry.'

'Don't.'

'I would not dare.'

'It comes from you. All of it. The way I feel and the things I've done.'

'Oh, of course... You know as well as I do where you end and I begin; You know as well as I do that everything you feel must be mine; how on Earth could you think these things, feel… These things… Do these things, if it were not for me?'

'I hate you. You think I don't, but I do.'

'No… you hate Voldemort, you hated Dumbledore, you do not like Cassiopeia… But me?' There was a long pause and suddenly his heart was in his throat, 'I would reconsider the term you use to describe it.'

'…What? No- What does that even- you are him. You're him. You say it all the time. Think it all the time. You're him. I hate you.'

'Of course you do.'

Harry's hands were still shaking as he took them away from the Defense corridor and back to the Gryffindor Tower.

By the time the thirty-first of August arrived, he'd managed to be spotted by no one other than Snape, -when he'd collected him from the Slytherin Common Room- Cassiopeia, and the Dark Lord, somehow, while eavesdropping. By the next evening though, he would no longer be wandering the halls invisible with only Tom for company.

Each time he thought about facing his friends, his housemates, the school as a whole after…

'Please stop throwing up,' Tom was mostly bored with his suffering, only paying attention when it overwhelmed them, otherwise deeming it a waste of time.

"Easy enough for you to… Kill people I- this isn't me…"

"I did nothing to assist you, other than clear your mind with the pain. You saw what you wanted, sought it out and took it, all I did… Was watch. So, you tell me, who is who?"

"It isn't just pain, and you know it… It's-"

"I have grown bored of you pretending you are not more than fine with it."

Harry didn't know if he meant the way the spell made them feel or the outright murder part.

'Both.'

'I'm fine with neither.'

'Lying all the time lately.'

Their repeated argument was interrupted by the now familiar but entirely unwelcome and unexpected pull in his middle. They'd been lying on the black chaise in Slytherin's Scriptorium, squabbling, unaware that Voldemort was even in the castle, let alone in the Chambers. Harry's mouth went dry as he shot up, Tom's panic told him everything he needed to know; that he wasn't welcome here, nor would this go well.

'Can we go out the other way?' Harry asked, turning to face the door, and moving before Tom stopped him.

'No. The door- works both ways. Let me do this.'

Tom turned them to face the statue right as Voldemort appeared from behind it, -dressed bizarrely casually; white dress shirt rolled up past his elbows, no outer robe- already incensed, wand raised. Tom had his hands up and had backed them closer to the shelves, possibly to use them as a shield, but the Dark Lord crossed the space at an alarming speed. He grabbed Harry by the shirt and slammed him into the bookshelf -immediately dashing Tom's hopes that the shelves would somehow protect them- wand at his throat as he repeatedly shoved them in the chest.

"Why would you bring him here? What is wrong with you?" He snarled, seemingly as confused as he was enraged.

Neither could make his lungs breathe, panic made worse by the weight on his ribs; the Dark Lord holding them hard against the stone and seething, furious, red in the face with it; the vein in his forehead bulging while Tom swallowed repeatedly. Rage was forming in Harry's gut at the sight of him, but it was mostly overwhelmed by fear as they squirmed, torn between trying to break free and angering him further.

'He's not gonna curse us, is he?' At the thought, his body erupted in goosebumps, hairs standing on end, nerves on fire at the mere suggestion, 'Oh. Stop. Don't. That's-'

Tom swallowed heavily again, ignored Harry, and grasped the Dark Lord's arm; hands shaking. He had begun to say that they wouldn't come back to the Scriptorium, possibly had even begun to apologize, beg, or grovel, when they noticed a small but growing sensation in the palms of his hands, spreading up his arms and blooming in his chest.

'Do not move. Don't-' Tom was pleading but he didn't need to, Harry was equally frozen, as though he'd been dropped into the Arctic.

Voldemort had noticed it too, rage slowly giving way to bewilderment as the three of them went still.

Like a vibration, a harmony. A jarring thing to touch the man you hate most in the world and feel a sudden rush of relief. A bizarre comfort that had to be Tom's; had to have come from the fact that he was a Horcrux, -a piece of his soul, made more whole when in contact with… Home- but somehow it felt like his too.

Up close, in the strange stillness; he registered that the Dark Lord couldn't be more than a few years older than the Horcrux version that appeared in his head, maybe twenty, possibly twenty-two. Easier to tell when he wasn't scowling. Sharp but widening eyes the same colour as the glow in the room. Green like the sea at the edge of a storm, he thought dumbly, throat relaxing; finally breathing as the adrenaline and fury left him in a whoosh as though dumped out through a trap door.

'What is that?' He finally managed to ask in his head.

Tom had shut their eyes, and he couldn't fight them back open.

"Get. Out," the Dark Lord stepped back, hissing, finally shocked into awareness, breaking contact and snapping Harry's eyes open.

He sucked in a breath and kept his gaze firmly on the floor as he did as he was told, head ducked as he rushed to vanish behind the statue.

'Tom... That- what was- Why hasn't that… happened before? What- what…' Harry couldn't get his thoughts straight as Tom carried them back through the tunnels under the cloak.

'It has… Always happened. To me. When he has touched you, in the past. For you, it would register as pain but for me it was… What did you call it? Home? Like that. Not that intense, I could not feel things the way I do now- I did not even consider- it must come from sharing a core, or… A body- I do not think he has ever felt it before… but he seemed to feel something. Why do you think that is?'

'I didn't call it… Home,' was all Harry could think in response, bewildered.

'What a stupid thing to lie about.'

"-most of his time invisible, as far as I can tell. I hear him scurrying about, little heart about to explode out of his chest," Cassiopeia said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her ankles on her desk.

"I know. I mean his… Mental state."

"Oh. Well. I've only spoken to him twice. The first time, it seemed pretty sure he was doing… Better than fine. When I spoke to Harry himself, -when he asked that we don't approach the Weasley- he nearly went into cardiac arrest at the barest mention of Dumbledore so, I'll be honest, your guess is as good as mine."

"And…"

"Constantly talking to it. Every time I hear him, he's whispering in Parseltongue to himself."

"…Right."

"Didn't you say you wanted to discuss vampiric politics?"

"…Yes."

His heart hammered as he led Alicent into the tunnels, indecision still rife but he was frustratingly desperate to share it with someone. To have someone worth sharing it with, to have it accepted. Be accepted. Something Cassiopeia had put in his head; something he'd long disregarded. And so the thought had possessed him that he could show him the Scriptorium.

He pushed open the rusted, engraved doors, cursed, he knew; ushered Alicent inside, slammed it shut behind them-

"No," it was Tom's turn to fight nausea, he coughed and spluttered over the edge of the bed while Harry examined the memory with not a small amount of vindication, happy not to be the subject of scrutiny, a mean gladness at dangling a dream in Tom's metaphorical face for once.

He was disregarding the meeting that was likely happening right then in the castle between the Dark Lord and Cassiopeia.

'Stop it.'

"Didn't go so well, huh?" He pressed, savagely pleased with it.

Tom responded by summoning Liquida Tenebris from every cell of his body and holding it suspended in the air while they both gasped and went rigid. He released it after an uncomfortably long time, then pointedly drew Harry's attention to his erection.

"Why- what is actually wrong with you- genuinely what-" Harry was breathless and violated, while Tom was furious.

"You are an idiot. Mind your own business," he snapped.

"Oh yeah, mind it like how you mind yours?" Harry sat up, violently rubbed his face, and felt for his glasses, then summoned the green orb when he couldn't find them in the dark.

He got the sense he wasn't going back to sleep, rage bubbling in both of them.

'I take it you do not intend to take care of that at any point,' Tom thought, and Harry had to wonder what he meant for far too long before he understood.

"Take care of it, what- I'm not about to- I mean you're in my head… I'm not- that's not a thing- I mean how even- there's no way- you're twisted-"

Tom rolled Harry's eyes heavily into his head and held them there for a moment, eyes shut, before he stood up and took them out of the tower under the cloak; through the castle and onto the grounds without another word or direct thought, though Harry could tell he was equally annoyed with Harry and amused with himself. He took the cloak back off and put it in Harry's bag, then ran for them. Harry stewed in what he'd said, frowning the whole time. Tom took some weird victory in making him uncomfortable with it.

By the time forty-five minutes had elapsed, he was finally free of the sensations Tom had caused for sport, and thinking about something else entirely. he lay spread out in the grass, trying to prepare himself for the day. His breath kept getting caught in his throat and chest. The sun was beginning to rise, deep purple in the distance, and it was September first.

It was perfectly possible that Hermione and Ginny both would not be on the train, that despite the new law, the Order would shield them from the school. In that event, they ceased to be students of Hogwarts, and so, they would functionally be Order members. The Dark Lord had vowed not to harm the students, but Harry only had his word on Ginny, and that might change if she were pulled away. He watched the stars slowly vanish while he debated the likelihood that some of his terms might be rendered void by the price he paid.

"Do you think they'll…That Ginny- what do we do if she isn't here?"

'We will manage it.'

Harry didn't know what that meant, but considering the cost so far, he wasn't sure how much he had left.

"Ah, there he is. I was beginning to think the castle must be haunted by someone named Harry Potter."

Harry sat bolt upright at the voice he recognized to be Avalon's. He'd figured he wouldn't be spotted on the grounds at sun-up, but she and Eris watched him scramble upright.

"Il n'a pas l'air si impressionnant que ça," she spoke to Eris in French, shaking her head, for some reason bristling Tom.

'Wait… You know what she's saying?' Harry thought.

'I know enough. Do not indicate that I understand her, it is… advantageous. She said you are not impressive.'

"What do you want?" Harry asked with more animosity than he intended, stressed by their presence, pulling the sleeves of his dress shirt down even though they already were.

"Oh, a feisty one. We were walking, enjoying the last sunrise in the solitude before the busy year. I spotted you in the grass, didn't I, Eris?"

He'd been silent, watching Harry, eyes narrowed. Distrusting. He gave a single nod at her words. Avalon looked at him with mostly amusement, but he could see the curiosity.

"At like, five AM?" Harry snapped, snatching his bag up, nerves wound tight.

"When else would one watch the sunrise," Eris finally spoke as he led a smiling Avalon away, "We'll see you."

They'd begun watching the map with more care after being caught in the Scriptorium, but they hadn't been back. The Chamber wasn't on the map, and though they were paying more attention, they weren't glued to the paper.

So instead, they'd taken to the library; under the cloak, while the sun rose to the middle of the sky, peaking as Harry's anxiety did. They'd be on the train if they were coming.

'Should we… Go to the feast?' Harry asked.

It was something he hadn't wanted to think about, but the only thing he could control would be where they would be when confronted with the rest of the students.

'Do you want to go to the Great Hall?'

'No, not really,' he felt sick at the thought of everyone's eyes on him, blaming him, no idea how right they were. Being where he was when…

'Then don't. We will find Ginny afterwards.'

'But I want to see… If she's here. Who's going to be here. How things… Are.'

'How fortunate you are then, that you can become invisible at will,' there was heavy sarcasm in Tom's tone of thought because they were under the cloak as they discussed it.

He'd mostly avoided -as he often did- all the things that he didn't want to think about. Like how he was supposed to study magic with his bizarre core, with nothing responding right apart from… And he wasn't keen on using it in front of others. It was a neon sign; it would attract questions and confirm suspicions. It also… He'd avoided the thought of how Tom had felt in response to touching Voldemort, something that Tom himself was having difficulty doing.

He'd avoided the thought that he'd murdered the headmaster in the courtyard, by any account in savage cold blood with little input, avoided, as best he could, the thought that he was the Dark Lord's Horcrux, that he was intertwined with it. His fault. That he truly couldn't tell where Tom began and he ended, where his emotions, sensations, thoughts, and convictions began. He'd avoided the reality that the Dark Lord had functionally won, that Harry was left with pieces of what had been all he'd known. And he'd readily exchanged it, willingly, hungrily, for… That it felt-

"Harry."

He groaned and sat back in the chair.

"Right. Stop throwing up."

He made his way to the hall far earlier than necessary, wanting to get a good vantage point well before time, mostly to soothe his nervous energy. He watched the map and Tom read a book on Transfiguration on the side, reciting it in their head while Harry gnawed his tongue.

His eyes kept flicking to the enchanted ceiling, monitoring the track of the sun, and listening for the bell in the clock tower, heart between his ears; when the sky turned fuchsia it thundered there, making them ring a tune. The faculty had begun to move about the castle, and the Death Eater guard at the perimeter had split apart, running several patrols at once, some in the castle. The train had to be close.

Once Rosier and Snape entered the hall, followed by Firenze, -a modified seat for the centaur at the staff table- his heart began to truly pound a beat. In a group came Slughorn, Pomfrey, and Sprout, all pale, frowning as they took their places at the head of the room. Darkness had fallen proper above them and the floating candles were lit. Harry had taken a seat at the Gryffindor table but he stood up when he heard the doors open again, the hushed footsteps of hundreds of students on the other side.

They were led inside by Cassiopeia, smirking, dressed dramatically in flowing crimson robes. She looked right at him even though he was invisible, still grinning. Harry backed into the far back corner and made sure to hold his breath as his fellow Gryffindors took to the table, moving around him, oblivious. All of them grim, white in the face as they claimed their seats. Harry scanned the crowd -of what he swore was far more students than he remembered- for Ginny or Hermione.

He saw her red hair first, -dropping his stomach and catching his breath- before she walked right by, Hermione locked arm in arm with her as they sat not far away. He waited for the rest of his house to settle then came to stand behind them, his whole body shaking. They were silent, grave, as they watched the staff table. Cassiopeia sat down next to Snape who then moved to take the podium. There were far more students, more than just the usual first years, over fifty students who looked older than eleven awaited the Sorting Hat.

An older man, somewhere in his fifties -clean shaven, short grey hair slicked back, dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, well-tailored but a wildly vibrant shade that nearly hurt to look at- entered through one of the side doors and sat with the rest of the staff.

'Cedrum?'

'Yes.'

"Do you see Harry anywhere?" Ginny whispered, craning her neck and scanning the table.

"No, and… you know that I don't think we will. How could he- How could he face us after- and no word at all… The whole time just- gone," Hermione kept shaking her head, getting louder until Ginny nudged her arm. He could see the tears forming in Ginny's eyes, she blinked and then swiped at them with the back of her hand.

"I can't believe Snape would betray Professor Dumbledore…"

"Hermione…" she warned, both falling silent.

Harry wanted to reach out and touch her, wanted to be sitting next to them. Guilt finally rose bigger than the rest in his gut at the sight of the fear radiating from them, both averting their gaze from the podium, Ginny with tears still fighting to escape her eyes.

'I hate you.'

"If, by chance, you have come to Hogwarts this year with the preconceived notion…" Snape began, voice enhanced and drawling over their heads, "…That all is… as it was, allow me to rid you of such foolishness."

"Albus Dumbledore was murdered by Lord Voldemort on these very grounds. The Dark Lord has seized control of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic - both. New laws and regulations are produced, changed, and enforced… Daily. It is in your best interest… To stay… Informed," he gave another long pause and glared the murmurs silent, "… To that effect… Relevant regulations will be posted outside the Great Hall as they are implemented. I, Severus Snape, will serve as your headmaster."

Harry's stomach flipped at the mention of Dumbledore's death. Ginny kept searching the table for him, her face slowly falling, tears finally streaming freely down her cheeks, making his chest ache.

"Many students are to be sorted; I will keep this brief. You will have noticed unfamiliar faces at the head table. Evan Rosier will be your Charms professor," Snape indicated the man with the long dark hair, sharp face, eyes ringed in red, who raised one hand and nodded, "Cassiopeia Bearstrom will be your Defense Against the Dark Arts professor," she stood up and gave a curtsy, several students muttered about vampirism, Hermione included, "Firenze will teach Divination, and Cedrum Widrich will take over Transfiguration," The man in the pinstripe suit tipped a hat that wasn't on his head as Snape spoke his name.

The new headmaster continued to introduce the staff who had stayed on after the attack while Slughorn arranged the stool and the Sorting Hat, hands fumbling. Harry noticed Hooch was missing. The students were sorted, and he avoided clashing with the new Gryffindors as they came, several new students in his house and his year. By then he'd spotted the Slytherins -Malfoy, Parkinson, Zabini, Crabbe, Goyle, and the Greengrass sisters- grouped and watching the Gryffindor table, as well as the two new Slytherins, Avalon and Eris, chattering with each other as though the feast was inconsequential; Luna, at his table with Neville; looking dreamy while Neville was sweating bullets and visibly swallowing. The feast appeared as the last students sat down. There was a hush as people slowly -uncertain, nervous, and shooting each other forlorn glances- began to fill their plates.

He could feel everyone at the Gryffindor table looking for him, and most of the student body besides, most eyes flicking to the red and gold side as often as they flicked to the staff. He decided he was done feeling it, done witnessing it, had seen plenty. So, he removed himself, back out through the still-open main doors, a masked Death Eater stationed on either side of the frame.