Mad Snorkacks and Englishmen

Hey, mateys! So sorry, this chapter took a while, no doubt. I hope it was worth the wait. Although, of course, as I re-read parts of DH to prepare, I realized that I'd screwed up a bit of continuity again and had to go back to fix my mistakes. Yeah, I knew Harry referenced Bathilda in the book, but got my titles mixed up. She wrote A History Of Magic, not Hogwarts: A History, duh. Okay, so I can't recall every detail. But I adjusted that error now, so bear with me as we move forward and I again had to remove suggestion that Hermione was reading the Skeeter biography when in fact she didn't even have it yet.



Anyhow---I know that last chapter was a doozy and I was really thrilled with the reviews I got. You guys are all great to bear with me when I get really dark; lol, I know I can get a bit disturbing. tommy, just wanted to let you know that nothing I described in that scene was made up, with the exception of the magical components----and maybe Luna's contortion bit. Yes, people really do that stuff in BDSM.



So, Harry had his Buffy moment and now he can hopefully come back from that. You sort of know what to expect next, but I'm hoping to add some surprises along the way in the upcoming chapters, so keep those great reviews coming and let me know what you think!













Chapter 29: Snake Man Redux







Ooooooh - stop



With your feet in the air and your head on the ground

Try this trick and spin it, yeah

Your head will collapse

But there’s nothing in it

And you’ll ask yourself



Where is my mind, where is my mind

Whe—ere is my mind

Way out in the water

See it swimmin’

--The Pixies, Where Is My Mind






Harry breathed lightly on Luna’s placid face as she slept. It had felt so supremely comforting to hold her the rest of the night but now he felt that thick coating of putrid despair on his skin and there was an insistence in his oscillating brain that told him to withdraw from her, get his fucking, filthy hands off of the poor girl. He had done enough damage already, hadn’t he? The boy thought of his blitzkrieg of pain on his willing victim last night; how he had kept upping his defilement to see what she would do, somehow convincing himself in the process that either she was too broken or he was when he’d come at last to the end. That slithering voice in his head had claimed it was her fault; she was just some loony, backwards girl who was so far gone she’d had no idea how abhorrent she truly showed herself to be when she accepted these things with such devotion. Her submission was contaminating him, making him into something foul every time he tried to push her further in their sick games.





So he had wanted to punish her for it, he told himself, and she had loved it all, apparently. Then that would mean the problem was her, right? It didn’t have be that he was what everybody had always whispered about him, or what he’d been punished for in the past; it wasn’t him, Harry Potter, Fucked-Up Freak Extraordinaire that got off doing this stuff his mind filling with perversions so vile they scared the shit out of him. Yet that other voice, the one that drove him to beat himself up mentally until he was exhausted, to ostracize himself whenever possible, or to feed into his inflated sense of ego that he was different, no one could possibly understand his life, blah, blah, blah; it had whispered that he was kidding himself again, desperate fool that he was. He had to face the truth and be a man about it. He was just a sick motherfucker; he had come out wrong, somehow. It wasn’t just about sexual kicks, either, but something that went deeper, more cancerous, a part of him that festered and sniveled while he tried in vain to be a better person, tried to be what everyone was hoping for. A malignant dark mass of cells lurking somewhere in his body that fed him a diet of grotesque imagery and bolstering audacity.





He hadn’t believed some of the things he had said to Hermione in their nastiest arguments, but that had been all him, hadn’t it? Harry had been annoyed that she hadn’t bowed down to him and he had doled out a penalty to her, too. Just as he had fretted over on the train in what seemed like years ago now even though it had only been at the beginning of summer. He sneered in his head at the bitter irony of it. The wretched boy wished he had the balls to leave Hermione and just go it alone, as he should have done from the start, and find Voldemort once and for all; let the bastard take him down, he just didn’t care anymore. At least he would be put out of his misery. He leaned his head back and stared up at the top of the tent wishing again that the answer was there written for him. What was he supposed to bloody do? Why couldn’t Dumbledore have stuck around to advise him when he needed him the most? Had the great wizard always known something was off about Harry? Is that why he hadn’t allowed himself to get too close, instead of what he had explained so patiently in his office after Sirius’s death? Harry thought briefly of the Snitch that had been willed to him; how even in death Albus had talked in riddles. It struck him suddenly that every possession he owned had been gifted to him from the grave: the Snitch, the cloak, Grimmauld Place, even his mother’s protection.





He wished that he could talk about all of this to Luna, the boy suddenly thought. God, how fucked up was that? He recalled again the words he had said to her about those beasts that had raped her as a little girl and he wanted to throw up as he cringed at the memory of her reaction. What could have made him say such a thing, he cried desperately in his head. How could Luna ever look at him now with any amount of trust or love? He had effectively ruined them, he was sure of it, obliterating the one thing in his life that had felt completely his and had allowed him to be substantially whole. His mind flitted over those seedy images of the things he had done to her last night. The electrocution? It had freaked him out. He had gotten the idea in a particularly visceral vision from his old buddy, Tom. He had seen everything through Voldemort’s eyes again, had seen inside evil incarnate as the snake-like man had coaxed Bellatrix under his fingers to open her legs for him, how she’d screamed and laughed insanely when the Dark Lord had cast a Cruciatus right into her cunt. After Harry had come to, back into his own shaken mind, he had been horrified to discover his prick was not only hard but erect. The aroused teen had functionally tossed off while Hermione had slept the next cot over, though, and had attempted to think of nothing but white sheets of blank space, an absence of color, so that he didn’t have to imagine him doing that to Luna as the cum came roaring out of the end of his knob like glistening evidence of his despoiling.





Harry heard a sigh and instantly rolled back over to the blonde girl anxiously. She was staring at him calmly with those big, giant eyes that made him want to crawl in, to want to bathe in those grayish, silvery pools and rinse off this sickness from his soul. Oh, if only he could, if only Luna would open herself to him again. He wanted to burrow inside her so badly it brought back those hot, shameful tears once more. He was so tired; so, so fucking tired. The boy knew he didn’t deserve her forgiveness, no matter how much he longed for it. She was better off without him, he reminded himself. He needed to send her back to school and be done with this insanity. She had enough to deal with at Hogwarts and he was only putting her in more danger with his summoning, let alone the mindfuck he was giving the serene witch. What had he done to her? She used to be so sweet and such a comfort to him, but he had corrupted her absolutely as she had taken his abuse. Hating himself, he hesitantly put a hand to her cheek and waited for her to leap back; expecting her to recoil at his touch. The girl stayed still, however, her eyes remaining on his.





“Luna,” he croaked blearily like he’d been eating gravel. She was silent as her eyes flicked around his face, inspecting him as if checking to see it was really still him, still the boy she adored and not the cretin he’d been earlier.





“Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?” he had asked, feeling foolish while knowing that there was nothing he could possibly rectify in this scenario to make it up to her but needing to show her his repentance all the same. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk to me,” he added guiltily, barely able to swallow around the aching hollow in his throat.





“I don’t need anything,” she quietly explained in all but a whisper. Harry felt his heart breaking just watching her. He could practically see her metaphorically wrapping her outer shell in thick wool to protect herself from him as she pressed the blanket around her shoulders. Harry had made sure to cover her completely as she slept, worried that she was having more nightmares about her brutal attack; whether from childhood or from him, and he lay there next to her shivering as he’d been only in his pants and t-shirt in the early morning chill.





“Maybe I should get you something to eat? Something hot in your body, perhaps?” He started and blushed at the sexual innuendo, so inappropriate for this moment, and hoped that she hadn’t read anything in to it. He just wanted her alright again.





“I don’t think I could really keep anything down right now,” she told him bluntly. Harry deserved that, he knew, but he still felt a flush in his face to hear it and have her reinforce his hand in all this. If only he could have remained cold and unfeeling, sending her away and then not ever seeing her again, but the boy had already come through his haze of power and cruelty with the air of someone coming out of a drunken night of reckless debauchery and now he only wanted to atone for his sins.





Luna’s gaze had shifted down to his chest for a beat before looking back into his eyes. “Are you okay? Should I be worried that you’re going make me feel bad again?”





It was like a vicious slap across his face, just as Hermione had given him last night, and while he flinched he gritted his teeth to bear the brunt of the guilt. He wanted to at least assure her she was safe for now until he could get her to Apparate back. She deserved that much, he felt.





“No, I’m not, but I promise I’ll leave you alone until you’re ready to go. Then you can curse me to hell and be done with me, I think.” It hurt him to say that with such finality, but he understood that he was doing the best thing for her, at this point, and that was all that mattered.





Luna watched him solemnly before speaking. “You know, when those boys wanted me to submit to their demands, I always managed to keep it away from my emotions. That was the state of my reality and I just got on with it. I knew it wasn’t really about me. Perhaps I even enjoyed having some power over them once in a while and made sure to impress them with my mouth so that there was one thing they had to acknowledge that I did well. And when I closed my eyes, it didn’t have to be them, it could be anybody that I was sucking off. Maybe that does make me a slag, if I liked it on occasion. But at least it was my decision to like it or not.”





Harry held his breath as he listened to her not trusting himself to speak, but then as she continued that guilt slashed at his stomach until it felt like ribbons of flesh hanging to his insides.





“It was different with you, Harry. All those things that I did that made me feel slightly dirty before felt so good when I did them with you, as if it was meant to be like that all along and I just had the wrong partners. You made me feel so safe, in so many ways. I could say anything to you and you never made fun of me, nor were you ever malicious or cruel. Everything you showed me or did to me didn’t leave me feeling used or betrayed, but stronger; proud even, that I could make you happy. Even when you whipped me, Harry, I felt your love coming through each strike. I hadn’t ever felt love like that from anyone before and so I knew what we were doing couldn’t be bad no matter what anyone else might have thought of it.” She looked at him fixedly for a moment and Harry felt suffocated. “I wish that you believed that, too,” she sighed sadly.







“If I thought for one moment, Harry Potter, that you sincerely wanted to see me have sex with a group of Slytherins for your benefit than you’re probably right, I would have done it—because what makes you happy makes me happy. I can’t help that that’s how I feel about you. I suppose it was naïve of me to think that you would only want me all to yourself; that you would always have my best interests at heart. Perhaps I was wrong about that, but it doesn’t mean I can suddenly stop being in love with you. Even if you don’t want to hear it anymore, I still love you, Harry.”





Harry felt his gorge rise again as he reminisced on his venomous diatribe that sent her into such a fitful state the night before. He just wanted to be numb; couldn’t he please just not feel anything for a while? As if in answer, Luna sat up to look around for a moment before sliding off the bed and heading over to the benches where they ate. Harry then heard her voice drifting over as Hermione’s joined hers, but the boy couldn’t move, just laid there while they spoke to each other in hushed tones. He didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying but simply folded his thoughts into that infernal miasma of condemnation, fury, and disgust while he stared hard at the other end of their tent. He was a miserable sod, alright, and the boy had never felt this lonely in his entire life. At least before, when he was young and sleeping under the stairs, he had been ignorant of what he was missing, carrying only some faint, nebulous idea of what it meant to have friends or to be loved. Now he knew better, and the thought of having to turn away from the people he cared so deeply for seemed mountainous and impossible.





Time grew fuzzy for him as he lay there; no longer aware of his surroundings too much until he heard a muted crack in the air of silence that clung to the canvas sides. Then there was a hand to the back of his neck and he looked sideways to see Hermione gazing down at him with some tenderness.





“Did she leave?” he asked his voice back to its gravelly timbre. Hermione nodded her head and haltingly carded his hair, as if she feared he might bite her at first, but he leaned his head into it needing the comfort. Harry had wanted Luna to leave, knew it was the best thing, but not being able to kiss her once more still hurt. He felt devastated by the loss.





“Luna wanted to know where Ronald was—I mean, Ron,” Hermione told him quietly. “I guess you hadn’t said anything about it so I went ahead and gave her a brief explanation, but I was curious why she didn’t know anything if she and Ginny were back to being friends. You don’t think that Ron went somewhere else besides the Burrow, do you? Or…or that, may—maybe something unfortunate happened?” Her voice squeaked on the unfortunate part and Harry was back to worrying about his mate again, hoping all this time that there had been a solid excuse for him not going home. He was too tired to let Hermione drag him into her anxiety now, however, and merely shook his head firmly.





“I think Ron can take care of himself,” he said hoarsely before finally sitting up and letting his gaze stretch across their space. He blinked several times as he looked for that whitish blonde mane, but she was definitely gone; his angel had fled.





“She told me that the DA was going really well and that Neville was doing a bang up job acting as the leader of their little gang. Apparently, some of the students have been moving in to the Room of Requirement permanently, taking up lodging there so as to escape the harassment. It sounds really dreadful what’s been going on. I can’t imagine how McGonagall is faring through all of this.”





Harry stayed quiet as she spoke. He couldn’t muster up the energy to worry or care much what the teachers or students were going through at this moment. Hermione rambled on while nervously playing with her hair, her eyes constantly going to his face to gauge his reaction to everything she said.





“You know, it is Christmas break for them next week. You probably should have waited to contact Luna once she was at home. Then you wouldn’t have potentially exposed her to Snape’s radar. I hope she got back safely.”





Harry whipped his head to her and glared. “Thanks, Hermione; that’s just what I need to hear. I could use a good kick in the gut while I’m down. Why don’t you crush my throat while you’re at it?” he snarled.



Hermione looked crestfallen as she stumbled through her apology. “Oh, I—I didn’t mean that, Harry! I’m—I—that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I just felt—”





“You just felt that it was your duty to smack me on the hand and tell me ‘I told you so’ in some manner, I get it. Hermione Granger always needs to be right, after all. Well, you were right, I was wrong; very, very wrong, feel better now? Has your world returned back to order? I fucked up; you must be thrilled you get another chance to wave your finger in my face.” He felt himself grow angrier the more he ranted, and he tried to grab hold of his emotions before they got out of check once more. None of what he had done was Hermione’s fault, the teen was reminded; he didn’t have to take his rage out on her. He had already used her as a punching bag enough.





Harry caught his friend’s terrified expression at his acerbity, her eyes wet with the tears ready to spill, and felt ashamed. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, willing his anger back into the pit from which it sprang before exhaling mightily.



“Sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbled in apology. He stared at Hermione’s white knuckles curled around the cot’s edge and saw an imperceptible loosening of their grip just the tiniest bit, her breathing resuming normally a second later. The teen was acutely aware of how awkward their relationship could turn if he let it. Hermione was probably scared to death of his black moods by now; he’d certainly given her just cause. Harry would have to take care to hold on to his one friend left, the one still by his side. She’d proven that she could just listen when needed and besides that tended to give him pretty good advice when she wasn’t being sanctimonious.





He reached out and put a hand over hers, squeezing once to add some warmth to his words.





“Really, ‘Mione, I didn’t mean to jump on you. None of this is your fault.”





At that, his Horcrux partner looked much relieved. She put her hand over the top of the both of theirs. “Harry, I’m sorry, too. I just want to help. Do you—,” she hesitated for a moment but then soldiered on, “do you want to talk about what happened? It might work for us to figure this out; to know how far the influence the locket has on us.”





The boy wondered just how much he could realistically tell her before Hermione Apparated away in horror; leaving him to the hunt on his own. He had implied to her last night that he had taken the sex play too far and said some abusive remarks while deep in his persona, but did he dare elaborate on any of what he did with the Ravenclaw? The idea seemed mad. Although…Luna had liked that part, that other voice piped up again, it was only what he had said after that had set off the girl. Harry cringed once again as the suggestions he’d uttered came back to haunt him. Fuck, he deserved Hermione’s scorn, too, he conceded. Plus, he needed to confess his sins to someone.





“I really did want to talk to her when I left you,” he began. “I felt like I had a lot to get off my chest and just wanted to square things away with her.” He glanced over to see the bushy-haired girl’s cheeks tinge pink, but didn’t let it deter him from his purging.





“But it took her a while to get to me once I’d sent her the coordinates. That hissing in my head; whether it’s the locket, or Riddle, or just my own fucked-up instability, I don’t know, but whatever it was it just got louder and meaner until I didn’t even feel like myself and had no idea why I was so bloody angry. By the time she got there, I had myself believing that I really DID need to punish her, and not just for fun, either.”





Hermione swallowed visibly and her eyes got bigger but never left his face as she waited for him to deliver the grisly details. When he let the pause linger, she finally prompted him.





“Did you hurt her badly, Harry? Luna was totally distraught but I didn’t notice any…well, bruises or anything.” Once again, her blush burned her face as she held her breath waiting to hear the answer.





Harry sighed. “Well, I paddled her and I whipped her with the riding crop, but she could handle that fine; she has before. I wanted to push her body in other ways, though. Tying her up in really strenuous poses and…doing other things that were really hard for us both. It’s weird; I felt as though if it hadn’t been for this poison running through me, it would have been a really amazing level for us. I mean, it WAS amazing, but then I had to go and play Jekyll on her.”





Hermione brought forth her no-nonsense, investigative expression, chewing on her lip as she contemplated the facts as Harry described them; it made the boy significantly lighter to see it.





“So, it wasn’t necessarily the activities you were doing, but what you said after,” she confirmed. Harry nodded as she continued on in her detective mode. “What kind of things was the voice telling you?” she inquired.





He didn’t really want to reflect too much on the space he had been in the night before, but he tried to answer her truthfully. “That there was something wrong with her. Like, her letting me do those things was some kind of proof that she was infecting me.”





“And you said this to her?” she deduced.





“Well, not exactly, but I pretty much declared her a whore.” Hermione’s mask of concern broke for a second into a shocked moue but Harry continued. “It was as if something in me really wanted to see her fall apart. And then…it just came out. I couldn’t seem to stop myself, like some kind of verbal diarrhea,” he grimaced.





“What? What did you say?” she asked somewhat breathless.





The exhausted boy hesitated a moment to think on whether he should divulge Luna’s private matters but ultimately settling on the notion that his soul really needed to be cleansed. He stared off into space while he explained in a dead voice.





“I suggested that the two monsters that raped her when she was little had primed her into liking the things we did; the things I threatened to do to her.”





Hermione appeared stunned but cried out another moment later. “WHAT?! Harry! Oh my God, when did that happen? Poor Luna,” she moaned. While the girl looked on aghast she seemed to be more worried about the blonde witch than with yelling at Harry for being a sick, cruel bastard. By this time, however, he was eager for her denunciation.





“She was ten. It happened about a year after her mother died, which had already been a traumatic enough ordeal for her. I mean, she saw the whole thing, you know? Her mum was pretty much blasted apart from a spell gone wrong. And then her dad went and had a nervous breakdown. It sounded like Luna was taking care of him more than the other way around. Can you imagine? And then she got attacked.” Harry felt the cold so deep in his bones now and yet his heart was seared to think of his girl in such pain. His friend’s hand was over her mouth and she looked a little ill, but she didn’t interrupt him and so Harry continued on with the sordid story so he could get to the end and await her vilification.





“They didn’t just rape her, either, but almost beat her to death. She was in hospital for a long time healing from her injuries. She—she can’t have children because of it,” he admitted while starting to feel strangely calmed.





The brunette at his side let her tears fall from her still frozen face at hearing just what their wistful friend had struggled through in her life. The air in the tent felt thick and cloying; Harry felt incredibly sleepy all of a sudden, but his voice went on in its monotonous drone.





“She and her father are pretty close, I gather, but I get the sense he’s really lost it quite a bit. He didn’t really get any better after finding his daughter mangled in the forest. Mr. Lovegood was supposedly really brilliant at one time and highly regarded in his career, but now he’s so caught up in his conspiracies and fantastical beasts that’s all he’s ever on about, apparently. Sometimes, I think Luna believes what she does out of loyalty to her dad. She’s the type of girl who would support you in anything.” He choked as he realized just how much that last statement was true.





“That’s just so awful. I had no idea,” Hermione murmured as her hand folded fully into his and gripped it tighter.





“Well, neither did I, but when she told me about it, things suddenly started to make more sense about her. I used to think she was living in the clouds and didn’t really care what people thought of her, and that’s partly accurate, but she’s mostly protecting herself, I think. She’s been….she’s been through so much. Luna shouldn’t have to deal with my shit. I always end up ruining everything,” he sneered bitterly and then gave Hermione a knowing look at how he had messed things up between them, too.





Hermione gazed back in silent acknowledgment before brushing it off and putting Harry in his place. “That’s rubbish and you know it. Enough of your self-flagellation act, Harry, you’re mad for her and you want to be with her. There’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to be more aware of what we’re dealing with now. I should have realized it when Ron left that it was only going to get worse. Remember, the locket holds a piece of You-Know-Who’s twisted soul, of course it’s going to turn everything to shit,” she finished wisely.





Harry tried not to laugh at her as his face turned slightly incredulous. “Yeah, I think I can easily remember who’s soul is in the locket, ‘Mione,” he dead-panned.





The bossy witch blushed again as she realized who she was talking to, but her shoulders straightened back as she attempted to clarify her meaning. “I just think that you need to stop putting so much of the blame for what happened on you, Harry. It’s counterproductive, if nothing else. I’m saying that you were working with a powerful and pernicious agent; you can’t hold yourself completely accountable. You said yourself it was like you weren’t even you. There seems to be a distinct difference in the way you are viewing your style of lovemaking now as compared to before when you were all gung-ho for it and proselytizing to me and Ron on what your relationship with Luna meant. What you said to her was horrible, I’ll admit, but just realize that it was more Riddle talking than you. That’s just the sort of low blow he’d use to make you push her away and keep you miserable. You have to think of the contents of that necklace like a fraction of him.”





Harry snorted. “Yeah, I Riddled all over her, alright.” Hermione gave him a puzzled look but he didn’t expound on the fact that he was referencing the slang for urinating. That would have been too much information, he suspected.





She sighed and looked to the ground seeming a bit nervous before she added her next thought. “I think that you’re especially prone to its effects, Harry. It’s like…like the Horcrux wants you, in some way. You’re susceptible either because of your insight into You-Know-Who or some other reason, but you need to keep it off. We’ll figure out a way to keep it guarded until we can find the means to destroy it. With any luck, the sword will be in Godric’s Hollow and we can get back to normal, again.”





Harry declined to comment on what normal constituted between the two of them; if that meant their little sexual experiment had come to a close. Frankly, he was afraid to touch his friend in any kind of overt way at this point, still not sure how his mind would react. Neither of them needed the further confusion and angst that their screwing around had wrought; he felt sure that they could agree on that.





“I really don’t think it should be out of sight, particularly at night. Maybe if we only wore it when we’re on watch and the rest of the time keep it off, it will lessen its control on our emotions. I know I feel a bit better already spending the night without it. Well, perhaps that’s a bit hopeful. I still feel round the twist, but you know, not as angry or scary as yesterday.”





Hermione watched him carefully; her eyes slanted to him as her hand automatically went to her throat. “Yes, you were definitely scary,” she attested.





The weighted down teen felt abashed when he thought back on how he’d treated her. “Are you all right, by the way?” he asked ashamedly, his voice thick with his concern.





She flicked her eyes away from him and breathed out shakily into the cold morning captured in their tent. “I’ll be fine, Harry. I think we both bollixed that up a bit.” She turned to him indiscriminately and concentrated on his knees. “I need to learn to hold my tongue on occasion. I can say some right nasty things, too.”





When he looked at her profile, he suddenly noticed how long her lashes were and that she’d grown out of a lot of the roundness in her face. He had been so used to seeing her as his best friend: one who possessed a nice body, surely, but always in that grey area of not pretty enough to notice her features. She had just never really stood out to him as a looker before. As his gaze perused her, it came to his attention that Hermione had become quite a lovely young woman, with a full mouth and etched cheekbones that gave her a slight romanticism with all that curly hair around her when she was at her most vulnerable. He brushed some of her hair back now with the back of his hand and she gave him a sweet smile as she turned to look up at him. In complete opposition to what he’d felt earlier, Harry felt the need to kiss her, all of a sudden, but only in the most tender approach. He bent over and bussed his lips to her cheek, smelling her curls full of smoke as they tickled his nose. He drew back and returned her deep gaze, hoping to impart with it all the things he couldn’t say to her aloud, how he had been sorry to hurt her and take advantage of their situation.





He needed to know one thing, though. “Was the other night—um, did you, you know, during our, um…” he sighed in exasperation, “when we had sex, I didn’t hurt you or anything, did I?” It was important for him to know that he hadn’t physically harmed her, at least.





Hermione appeared slightly embarrassed at first, but then settled into thinking about the question seriously. “Oh, well, I wouldn’t say that. I was just, uh, perhaps a bit sore after and not used to the exercise, but it was, um, well, satisfying,” she blushed.





Harry was intrigued by her answer and couldn’t stop himself from gleaning more. “So, you did come, then? It certainly seemed as if you did, but mind you, I was a bit busy being a bastard at the time.”





Her laugh rang out in stark contrast to the serenity of the forest and the bleak mood in the tent; Harry wasn’t sure whether to be amused or shocked by her reaction. She looked at him again with a mixture of coyness and smug understanding.





“Harry, you’d only been making me orgasm every night for a month, I’m sure you could tell as it was quite obvious.” She snuck another bashful glance in his direction before turning away. “You’re very good at that, you know,” she commented quietly.





“At what; being a bastard?” Harry joked. Hermione giggled again but then gave a dramatic sigh.





“Oh, stop, Harry. You know very well that you can give a girl quite a powerful orgasm. Merlin knows you spent enough time glued to my bits to determine that I, er, appreciated your efforts. God, look what you would reduce me to. Luna is a lucky girl…when you’re not in bastard mode.” She gave him a half-smile before her eyebrows furrowed and then bit her lip while appearing to muse on something else.





“That just shows you how far gone I was, you know. When you said that you didn’t feel like yourself once Luna arrived; I could completely understand that, since I’d felt virtually the same way. Once I started shagging you, it was like I was trying to beat you in a game, or something, trying to push you over the edge; like some driving force was goading me into it. I mean, it changed a little when you, you know, actually started to do something other than lay there,” and by then her face was bright red, “but there was definitely a presence I could feel. It’s just been getting stronger over time. I hear the voices, too, sometimes.”





The two teens regarded each other silently as they both wondered how much of their dark thoughts they could consign to the locket and how much was really them. Harry felt that chill run through him again. “Do you think about dying a lot, ‘Mione? Were you really worried that you were going to die a virgin?” he asked out of the blue.





Hermione’s face grew alarmed but then quickly turned pensive. Without saying a thing, she simply nodded her head and squeezed his hand tight.





“Does it make any difference now?” he wondered.





“Actually, I’m starting to feel like we just might get a break soon, Harry. I think we have a good chance once we get rid of this Horcrux. If we can just figure out the others and their locations, it can work.” She waved her hand in an arc as if to encompass the vast outdoors. “I know it’s been hard to see the forest for the trees, but perhaps all this upheaval lately has made it easier for me to see the lines clearer now. We need to stay on our path, Harry. Let’s hope Godric’s Hollow is on that road,” she remarked optimistically.





“What about Luna? You mean what you said about her being…lucky? With me?” He felt so wretched about the girl, already missing her so sharply. If there was even an infinitesimal chance that he could work things out with her, that he could banish all this darkness and just be happy with her, then he wanted to see her at the end of that road terribly.





His bushy-haired friend was adamant in her tone as her expression softened. “Harry, you ARE good for her; I can see how much she loves you. As much as she’s had to endure, I don’t think you are the worst of her problems. You have to believe that the two of you are stronger together than apart. Hold on to the love you feel for her, Harry, and you can overcome all this darkness; I know it. Just believe in it. You do deserve her. You are loved, Harry. Remember that.”





The boy felt the tears rolling down his face, pooling on the edge of the frames of his glasses. He swept Hermione up into his arms and hugged her tight; his chin resting over her shoulder as he squeezed his eyes shut and willed her words to be true. Things would turn around for them soon. Luna still loved him. Hermione still believed in him.





Once they got to Godric’s Hollow, it would all get better.











~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~









Hermione sobbed again as she struggled to move Harry’s inert form. She was terrified out of her mind but knew she had to get him inside the tent and tend to his injuries quickly. The snake bite could be poisonous, for all she knew. They weren’t even sure what breed Nagini was. She grabbed her wand from her pocket, noticing that her trembling hands were back to being her own as she cast a low Hover Charm on Harry to float him through the canvas flaps and over to his bunk. She retrieved the broken halves of his wand from her other pocket and gaped at the snapped holly stick, still dangling together by the phoenix feather. Harry would never forgive her for this, she wailed in her head. The stricken girl put it to the side of the bed as she surveyed her companion again. The balding, middle-aged man was bubbling in his skin and changing his features to round-framed eyes as wild black hair sprouted out of his pate; the scar bright red and livid.





As soon as his form was recognizable again, however, he started to moan and roll his head side to side. Hermione panicked a bit but ran to grab hold of her purse and root around in the cluttered contents for her dittany bottle. When she got back to Harry, she put her hand to his forehead and felt his skin burning at the touch. She wished she’d brought more potions with her, but for now all she could do was clean the wound and give him some Muggle fever medication. The young witch wasn’t quite sure how she was going to get it down his throat as her mind sped forward and she began to undo the buttons on Harry’s shirt. He wore a white tee underneath with a v-neck and she could see the bump of the locket’s shape beneath the cotton. She had argued with Harry over who should be wearing it while they made their visit, but he had won out, insisting that it wouldn’t be for long and he would feel better knowing of its whereabouts in such a dangerous location. Hermione had worried briefly that he would turn nasty and belligerent the moment he put it on, but the boy had stayed even keeled and quiet as they prepared to leave.





It had been hard to see him so despondent in the cemetery when they found his parents. It had been almost a week since Luna had left and they’d been able to gain the right hairs for their transformation, but he had been depressed the whole time no matter how Hermione had tried to cheer him or bolster his confidence again with ideas for their next search once the locket was taken care of. She knew she shouldn’t have put too much stock in Harry’s birthplace being the current home of the sword, but she had wanted to see her friend show a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Things had slowly gotten better between them as each day passed, at least, no matter where Harry’s mood was fixated. The girl had felt awkward at first when they would change positions during the night watch, expecting at any minute that she would be grabbing for his zipper while he pulled up her jumper, yet nothing like that had taken place again and there was the slimmest part of Hermione that missed it. Being able to touch him so comfortably and affectionately had been a gift and she wanted to be able to have that again, she thought. When Harry had walked away from his parents’ graves and put his arm around her, the girl had felt a flood of relief, quickly wrapping her arm around his waist as she warmed to the idea that her Harry was back to his better self even in his grief.





Unfortunately, all hell had broken loose not even a half hour later. Hermione kept mentally kicking herself for thinking that Godric’s Hollow held the answers. She wasn’t even sure what had happened to poor, addled Bathilda after the attack from Nagini. When she had heard Harry shout, then glass breaking and the slams into the walls upstairs, she had thrown the Rita Skeeter book on Dumbledore that she had found sitting on Miss Bagshot’s shelf into her bag and ran up expecting the worst. What she thought of as the worst, though, couldn’t even begin to come close to the scene that had been waiting for her. Seeing Nagini’s huge body circled around Harry’s old man appearance and squeezing the life out of him had paralyzed her for a timeless second before the reptile had looked to her with its tongue slithering and ready to leap forcing her out of her stupor. She’d gone to hex it as it dived at her but her aim had been off and the next moment she heard the window shatter as she flew to the side of the bed to avoid the beast. She had darted her head around trying to find the old woman and bring her to safety but she was nowhere to be seen. Then Harry was free and waving his own wand about. She had wanted to get to him but her fear had gripped her just then and she huddled at the bedside when Nagini’s attention was back on Harry. When she suddenly heard him screaming that He was coming, she’d known instantly whom he was referring to and she pushed herself to get up and move.





Harry leaping across the bed to grab her and drag her backwards had startled her enough that she’d cried out, but then let him propel her, shouting out the Blasting Curse a second later as the thrashing snake tore up the room. She had barely avoided more glass shattering near her face when she felt Harry fling them forward through the open window, their defenestration finally provoking her to come out of her shock as she turned into the twist and Disapparated away with her friend. When they’d landed about ten meters from their camp, Harry had immediately fallen to the ground and screamed in agony, going silent a few minutes later after he’d fainted. The frightened girl had fallen on her rump in the slipshod re-entry and when she’d gotten up to discover that she’d crushed Harry’s wand under her, she’d almost been sick, fearing what he would do to her. But Harry had needed her attention first, giving her some focus to push through her trauma and press forward.





She looked at him closely now, peering in to see his eyes dilated and wild the next time he opened them; freaking her out as the blackened irises rolled around unseeing and a hiss sounded out of his mouth. Hermione identified his Parseltongue and froze as she worried what he might do next, but then it abruptly stopped and he went still again. The girl tore the shirt away from his arm, not even bothering with a spell to remove it now, and inspected the horrid looking gashes from Nagini’s fangs. She took the patch of material that used to be his sleeve and used it to dab the herbal solution to the wounds hoping it was all that he needed. Her eyes scanned over his chest again and she saw the pulsing there making her heart catch in her throat. What was it doing? Had Voldemort felt it? She was afraid of the answers, but went to remove it from Harry anyway thinking that she needed to get it away from him as soon as possible. The minute that she stretched his neckline down enough to touch it, however, her hand felt frozen by the intense cold emanating from the locket. She pulled it back in horror but then Harry was moaning again, although this time not in pain. They were flowing into something anticipating pleasure. Hermione’s mind reeled with the change.





Then she heard it. It was Harry’s deep voice alright, yet it didn’t sound anything like him. “Fucking Mudblood whore.” It came out like a drawl and just the tone of it made her skin crawl. The girl didn’t want to touch him, but was afraid to move away and when he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at her, her scream pierced the deepening night.





Harry’s eyes were blood red.





“You know there’s only one thing Mudbloods are good for,” he whispered in that unfamiliar drawl. His face turned into the most vicious and hateful smile she’d ever seen, let alone on her best friend, and her blood seemed to stop pumping to her heart in that moment. The lip curled up into some revolting parody of Harry and when he spoke again it was all she could do not to run from the tent.





“You’re just a hole to be used, bitch. Can’t even make a decent breeder. You reek, Mudblood. Is it that time of the month?” Then an awful, shiver-inducing laugh came out of his mouth and the girl knew she had to get that bloody thing off of him now.





When she grabbed at it, though, the gold stuck fast. With a dawning horror, the girl realized the cold, beating locket was now fused to his skin and no matter how hard she tugged it would not tear free. Her panic stole over her as his loathsome giggling continued. Perhaps she should Stun him while she tried to remove the Horcrux, she contemplated, but just then the boy’s scarlet eyes rolled back into his head; she stared horrified at the whites until he sat up ramrod straight and howled again only to fall back to his bed in a thump as his body squirmed in its stress and he was crying out as Harry once more.







“Noooo! Nooooooo! Stop, don’t, NO!!” he groaned as he flailed about.





“Harry? Harry, wake up!” she yelled at him, but the boy couldn’t seem to hear her, stuck in the grip of his dream or his vision, she couldn’t tell which, almost as fast as the gold upon his flesh. Her hand tore at his tee-shirt, but her shaking hands couldn’t manage it and so she grabbed her wand and magicked it away a second later. As her palm grazed over his chest, his skin there felt like ice, so diametrical to the fever burning on his forehead. Harry’s lament continued as she pointed her wand to the gold again and tried to sever it right off of him.





“Dad! Oh, please, don’t. Dad!!” His screams were pure agony for her to listen to as the boy folded into sobs and his chest heaved in his despair. When she heard him start to call for his mum in a child’s plaintive voice, the tears poured from her eyes but she wouldn’t allow her concentration to waver as she finally peeled away the offensive gold and ripped it from his neck. She flung it into her purse violently and then snapped it shut tightly as if it would try to escape. Staring back at Harry in her terror, she could see the oval shaped scar she had left there; the skin bright red where she’d practically sliced it open.





“Mummy? Mummy, wake up, mummy, wake up,” he cried over and over, like a frightened toddler left alone. Hermione cooed over him as she would if he were just that, whispering to him that she was there, she would take care of him.





The boy quieted down eventually and his weeping subsided into hiccups as he seemed to drift off into unconsciousness again. She buried his freezing body under all the blankets in the tent even as his fever raged. At one point, he seemed to revive for a bit until he was making gagging noises and Hermione had had to tilt his head into a bowl and let him vomit. When she had wiped his face and watched him pass out again, she re-administered another application of dittany to his bite and then fished the paracetamol out of her expanded purse, careful to sideswipe the gold chain. She lifted Harry’s head up enough to get him to swallow the pill as she massaged his throat, giving him a sip of water and tilting his head back to let it drain.





He had been quiet for an hour as she watched him sleep, but then he grew fitful again and she was back by his side as his moans increased.





“No,” he kept repeating, but Hermione tried to get him to awaken this time.





“Harry, it’s all right, you’re all right!” she soothed.





“No…I dropped it…I dropped it,” he insisted in his dreaming state.





“Harry, it’s okay, wake up, wake up!” She nudged him on the shoulder slightly as she waited for him to finally come out of his delirium; his forehead had beaded with perspiration again. She dipped a sponge in some water she had poured into a small bowl and wiped it across his face as she attempted to cool him off. The girl jolted slightly an instant later when Harry’s eyes suddenly opened. This time, though, they were blissfully emerald green.





The girl felt that relief flood through her again as she got him to finally speak. She was alarmed when he was so soon to get up and want to move around, but he appeared to be robust enough to stand and get dressed in another shirt. Hermione had been sickened when he’d explained to her just what happened to Bathilda Bagshot. The idea was revolting but it certainly explained the putrid smell of her when they’d been led inside her home. Still, the magic that it sprang from scared her. Just when she’d thought she’d understood the limits of their powers and the Wizard world, the dark side would come along with an invention so foul it would almost shame her to call herself magical.





When she’d had to explain to him in a stutter how she’d broken his wand, the tears were back at the ready, but he had taken it remarkably well. She knew he was just keeping his temper in check in light of what they’d been through recently, but she was grateful for it anyway. She didn’t know how she would have handled losing her wand; it was like an extension of her arm. She expected that Harry felt the same way judging by his expression. Still, he had fled from her and she sat there for a long time once he’d gone outside under the pretense of sitting guard and let the exhaustion hit her at last. Feeling wretched that she couldn’t fix her friend’s magic focus, she’d finally thrown her body to the bed and fell into a troubled sleep.











~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~











Harry sat outside again watching the snow come down silently as he pulled out an old cushion to sit on. They were in the Forest of Dean now, a place Hermione had been before, and the snow had been falling consistently for days, certainly since their narrow escape from Voldemort’s clutches. It had been several nights of strange dreams and fretful anxiety over his losses which were now too numerous to bear. Knowing that he’d dropped the picture of the boy Voldemort had been after had been a blow, but having that on top of losing his wand and losing Luna had just about destroyed him. He had been foolish to think that Dumbledore had left the sword for him there. What an idiot he’d been. Dumbledore left him nothing, nothing but lies and secrets while he prepped him as his errand boy. For the Greater Good, he jeered vehemently in his mind. Reading the Skeeter biography with Hermione had been the final straw and Harry couldn’t see any way out of this pitch black, snaking tunnel he’d crawled into. He’d given everything and had nothing to show for it; all that tribulation was for naught. The bitterness swirled inside of him like a whirlpool of acid; melting his organs and leaving him an empty shell. He’d put his faith and trust in a man who was a fraud and a liar. And just what had he been asked to do by the old man? Dumbledore might as well have asked Harry to produce the moon in a gifted box.





At the thought, Harry stared up into the black sky looking for the shining rock. He could barely see it tonight; he could barely see anything, in fact. There were a few twinkles of stars and they reminded him of his mentor. He looked away and searched for the moon again, just a pale sliver tonight hiding behind dark clouds bringing more snow. He suddenly recalled Luna’s ode that she’d recited for him on that fateful night that Albus had left him. In that moment, his entire body ached for her, every nerve singing out in need to want to hold her, touch her, breathe in her scent and stroke her long tresses. Would she come to him if he summoned her, he suddenly wondered? She was at home with her father now; it would be easy for her to get away.





He thought of her tucked in her bed safe and warm. Would she be sleeping dreamlessly, all thoughts of Harry purged from her brain? Or would she be awake and staring up into her painted ceiling, staring at his face there and thinking of him out in the wilderness? He wanted to believe the latter with all of his heart. Yet calling her out to him at…he tucked into his pocket and pulled out Luna’s watch, popping open the catch to see the face lit with the time. It was only ten o’clock, but still, he would be a selfish prat to think he could just expect her to come rushing to him, particularly after what he’d put her through last time.





But ah, Gods, he missed her. I just need to hold her he shouted in his head. The memory came to him again of that first night with her on the top of the Astronomy tower, how anguished he’d been then over Dumbledore and how she had rescued him. He wanted her to rescue him now. If only he could wrap his arms around her and Disapparate them to a part of the world where no one would ever find them and the Wizarding world could figure out how to get rid of Tom on their own. They certainly didn’t need ‘Undesirable Number One’ to assist, a mere boy with no idea how to find his way out of this mess he was in. Stupid fucking prophecy; they could all kiss his arse, he fumed.





He put his pocket watch away and felt the Galleon at the end of his fingertips. Just for an hour he groaned. If she would only come to talk to him for an hour, he would be all right again. She would be able to counsel him on how he was supposed to feel about the great wizard’s betrayal. She would know what to do next. He didn’t even care about the secrecy anymore, wanting to tell her everything and hear her perspective on Horcruxes and where he should look next. Maybe her father even knew something about them in his work as an Unspeakable, he thought, grasping at straws. Still, it’s worth asking about, right?, he considered to his inner voices. Cor, mate, you’re a real piece of work, you are another one answered. He really had no excuse to call her.





Except that he wanted to. No, he needed to. He still owed her a deep apology for his atrocious behaviour last time, no matter that it was a compromised disposition. Harry held the Galleon in his fist and squeezed tightly. Yes, Luna would know what to do; she could help him figure this out, he convinced himself. He brought out Hermione’s wand and used the Locator spell to shimmer forth the degrees of their area. It was about the only thing he could see clearly now. He couldn’t use the Lumos to see what he was doing, but quickly added the Protean charm’s effects to embed the numbers to the coin. It glowed once and then faded. Well, it was done now. He would summon Luna to him right here, right in front of the tent and they could talk. He wondered if he should bring out some blankets for her to snuggle in, but then decided to wait for her to arrive first, keeping them in the warmth of the tent until needed. Almost immediately Harry felt like a heavy boulder had been lifted from his back. His skin tingled and he sat up straight as he waited to see her luminous face again; calling his own moon to him in this darkness.







~~~~o~~~~







He waited for two hours, checking his watch every fifteen minutes or so to see how much time had passed. At last, he had to admit to himself that she wasn’t coming. Luna didn’t want to see him anymore. The damage he’d caused had been irreparable. The boy’s heart splintered into a million pieces as he sat there in the black forest listening to the sounds of the night yet feeling detached and far away. He thought he heard something crashing into some trees or brush but he didn’t even have the strength to look in that direction. If a Death Eater wanted to come claim him, well, then he was welcomed to it.





Harry sighed and looked back towards the tent. He still had Hermione to protect he reminded himself. She really was all he had left. He closed his eyes against the hot tears that had sprung up and threatened to fall. His angel had sent him a message and he could do nothing about it. He was right back where he started; destitute and depleted. Then he gazed back out into the clearing ahead and he suddenly saw it.





There was a light ahead.









~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~









Ron was freezing his bloody arse off. He’d been stumbling around this bleeding forest for hours now and still no sign of them. He was certain they were here, though, the little ball of light had taken him right to this place. He didn’t want to have to keep starting over again, he seethed, he had already tried to find them twice before with no luck. Stupid protective charms he muttered to himself as he wrapped his arms around his sides again trying to keep the warmth from exiting his body. The gangly teen had used up six Warming Charms on his sorry arse since he got here and still he was cold. He told himself to just keep moving and stop whingeing. He could do this. Ron would find them again and everything would be back to rights.





He had been so surprised when he’d finally discovered just what the Deluminator was meant for. Hearing Hermione’s voice come out of it that night had shocked him to hell, but seconds later he was giddy from excitement as he realized just how he could get back to them. When he’d seen that fuzzy ball of light, he hadn’t even hesitated, but let it fly straight into him and show him the way back to his friends. Of course, they had been gone by then, but he had kept trying, going back to Bill and Fleur’s to get more supplies before bidding them goodbye with the promise of success. And now here he was, standing knee deep in snow but knowing in his bones that they were here somewhere and he just had to find them, just had to look in the right place.





The boy thought he heard a strange sound and whipped his head towards it. There had been some weird wildlife that he had run into recently, but tonight the forest had been quiet as the animals burrowed away. He glanced around in anticipation, sure that he would see Harry and Hermione’s tent at any moment, when he suddenly saw it.





Up ahead, he could see it; there loomed a bright light.





A light that looked suspiciously like a stag.









Some of the dialogue is taken from Deathly Hallows. Oh, and yay! Ron is back!