Work Text:
Do you like the way the water tastes?
Like on fire
For you but you could never say
Then come forth cause it's coming round
Do you like the way the water tastes?
Round the water
Beware, the water
Tossing and turning at night had become the norm for Harry, sheets would tangle around his legs, pulling him down under as his dreams turned into nightmares. There had been a time, seemingly a whole lifetime ago, when the nightmares had been related to you-know-who, where it was his mind that tortured him. The connection between the two was something that plagued him, a dark infection taking over his own mind. Then had come the war and with it the memories of the battle and the traumatic experiences it’d brought with it. Nights had been about reliving the worst days of his life, the pain and fear flickering in and out as his brain switched between memories, dreams, and nightmares. This had been what had truly got to him, the respite of his waking moments tainted by the unstoppable reaction he’d have to scents, sights, or sounds that would trigger those memories to rush to the forefront of his mind.
He could recall the way seeing his friends dying or being tortured felt, the searing pain of their suffering burning through him. He could recall watching the one place he’d called home being destroyed, the rubble and gaping holes. It had all seemed to be the worst his nights could ever be, the phantom presence of the war haunting his dreams. Silent unheard prayers to whatever deities existed were recited in his mind, the need for it all to stop burning bright in his chest.
This was different though. These were new deaths. Deaths that couldn’t be placed in the hands of a megalomaniac madman.
The vacant eyes he saw every night seemed to move and trace his every movement, their piercing unseeing gazes making him shudder under their scrutiny. Parted cracked lips that would go on neverending whispering, a string of accusations that jabbed at his conscience. The echoes of the dead were a symphony to the darkness that seeped in. His life and his mind fell to pieces he desperately tried to put back together. And when he did, they slotted together by sheer force of will to form one mismatched puzzle. One that was only held by the crushing feeling of guilt that dared suffocate him. He saw himself the way he truly was, a pawn within the game of chess that was the Ministry, a mere executor, once a weapon now the harbinger of false hope.
He thought back to the faces he saw as Morpheus' arms embraced him in an iron grip and dragged him further down into treacherous waters. They were faces he barely recognised. Faces like his own.
He stood in front of the mirror, water still dripping from the faucet he’d opened moments ago and also from his face. The little droplets clung to his sickly-looking skin, ghostly white under fluorescent lights. His eyes had now a haunted quality to them, one that had become a permanent fixture after the war and his auror training. If he looked hard enough, if he focused, he could see the ghosts of those he had failed dancing like shadows behind green irises. Not for the first time, he wondered if those around him could see this too.
There was something else though, something darker, something that kept trying to claw its way out. He could feel it, buckling against the chains he’d so carefully established around the thing's ankles, around its arms, and around its head. It thrashed, desperate to escape its prison, its battle cry roaring in his ears. It was slowly tearing him apart from the inside out, its sharp claws digging deeper, its breath on his neck hot and steady. The thing was ready to pounce, to dig its hands and mouth into him, never letting him go. Shredding what remained of himself and taking over in his place.
He breathed in deeply as if inhaling would somehow push the monster down. As if pure air could somehow squash the raging beast within, prevent it from tainting him further. But as he closed the faucet and turned away from his own reflection, Harry knew this would be fruitless. The monster was him. He was sure there would come a time when he would no longer be able to run away from himself.
***
It had been an accident really, discovering how easily and effortlessly he could manipulate someone’s mind. He had been training at the Ministry, hard at work guarding his thoughts lest his crumbling mental stability show. He had learnt just how vital guarding what went inside your own head was, how having control over one’s mind could be the deciding factor between life and death. So he had spent months upon months focusing on occlumency and in turn on legilimency, the two different sides of the same coin. And once he could concentrate, free of taunting mentors and someone’s soul inside his head, he’d been able to tap into the source of his own magic. Its presence, almost as if it were its own being, was as grounding as his patronus.
The feeling that had run through him as his mind became impenetrable was one he had cherished. His mind being his own after everything he had gone through was of uttermost importance to him, something he didn’t take for granted nor thought anyone should. So of course he had wanted the same for his mates, he had needed to show them why it mattered and how to achieve it. Sharing his knowledge had come to him naturally even if his social skills still needed some work. He didn't know he saw himself as a leader but he did fancy himself a mentor of sorts. He had been sharing what he knew for years, after all, it was almost second nature.
He hadn’t accounted for what going inside someone's mind would feel like. He hadn’t counted on the thrill, on being able to see every single private thought, every shameful secret, every filthy wish. And almost as if by chance, by some miraculous accident, he had altered a memory. He hadn’t meant to, he had simply stumbled as he made his way inside the other wizard’s mind. He had done his best to put the man’s thoughts back to what they were, to rearrange the details he had accidentally touched as he’d infiltrated through the other wizard’s mind. And it had been so easy, such an innocuous thing to do. He’d grabbed the memory and it’d bent to his will, reshaping, re slotting itself inside the wizard’s mind as if it’d always been there, untouched.
Emboldened, he had gone for something more significant, sorting through memories, grasping one where there was enough room for changes to be made. Enough to experiment, to re-make to his own liking. He had let the heady power run through his veins unbridled. He got to be the director of the sad man’s life, scenes coming out of thin air, the people in the memories actors following his script. The person that had left the room after their training was different from the one that had come in. Afterwards, he’d sat in shock at what he’d just done. It had been so easy, so effortless. He’d closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and feeling the remnants of the high he’d just experienced. It was then he’d realised he wasn’t leaving that room as the person he’d been either. The experience had unlocked something within himself he wasn’t sure he would be able to cage back inside.
Harry’s blood had thrummed in his veins in a way that made him feel more alive than he’d ever had, far more than when he’d been on a broom flying. Freedom like nothing he’d ever felt before had coursed through him as he felt himself step away from the boundaries that had been placed on him. The notion his power could help him walk out of a world he was quickly learning to loathe invaded his senses. He could make his own world, his own rules, and set his own limits. He could start doing so by changing the world of others, through how they saw it, and how they remembered it. He was Apollyon. He was annihilation and creation.
He had repeated this exercise, sitting in yet the same room with another one of his teammates. The trust that was being placed in him was something that served to fuel the fire he felt increasing inside his chest, the burning inferno threatening to consume him. He had felt the need to go further than he’d had before, to sort through everything that had been on the other auror’s mind and have it become something of his own creation. He had taken and shaped memories for what felt like seconds, maybe minutes, or hours. He had kept going for more, breezing through memories until he could spot one that would pick his interest. He had done so until he saw his own face looking back at him. And it’d stopped him dead in his tracks.
The memory of him, one where he was younger, far more naive, with a silly smile on his bespectacled face, had been a punch to his gut.
All air had left him as he’d looked at himself through the man’s eyes, exiting the memory as fast as he’d been able to. He had left the man’s mind and the room, no explanations given. The contents of his stomach had also left him as he’d retched into the loo. He could barely recognise himself and that thought frightened him to his core.
***
Two words. It had only taken two words for the chains on the beast to break. It had been unleashed but instead of tearing him down, it had evaporated almost immediately. It had become weightless and had seeped into his every pore, settling over him seamlessly. It’d merged with every fibre of his being, taking residency as if his body had always been its own. It had coiled around him, seeping in the way that water did over parched grounds as green light vanished from his sight.
The body had fallen to the ground and Harry had soared. It had been as if he suddenly had wings, flying high above the constraints of this world, above the darkness around him but not to the one within him. He had felt himself starting to become one with the dark creature that had resided inside him, the dark and the light merging in one swift and merciful motion. His world was put back into axis, the rightness of finally being whole was exhilarating. He had let the feeling wash over him, electricity running through his body, shocking his system. He had come to life, reborn, yet again. Green flashing light had illuminated him, a revelation of sorts at the end of the tunnel that had been his life. The truth he had been trying so hard to avoid now glaring, right in front of his face.
And still, he’d felt it at the back of his mind. The faint voice of reason, the one that had looked after his humanity and his life. Please don’t, it said in the softest of whispers. With trembling hands, he’d pushed the truth about himself aside. But he could no longer push the beast down, it had now become him. Pandora’s box had been opened and as he listened to the voice of his best friend in his mind, he wondered just how much had now been left untied and what it was that had remained firm down at the bottom.
***
He hadn’t been able to hold for long, every assignment he carried for the Ministry pushing him further and further to the edge. Every corrupt interaction he witnessed and couldn’t stop, couldn't speak of, made such ire rise in him that he feared he’d lose control. He’d almost wished he hadn’t been privy to those dirty secrets, his hold on himself slipping through his fingers.
He’d then had to help his best mate after he’d killed Fred’s murderer. This had made him think nobody should have felt the guilt Ron did. He could see the fear in his best mate’s eyes and it’d broken whatever binds he’d been able to place around himself. He wanted the fear that was in Ron’s eyes to be in every person that had failed him. Every bastard that looked away or down at galleons when justice wasn’t served. He wanted that fear to be what he saw as he stared down into criminals' eyes. He wanted to own their fear and their fate, their hope and their nightmares. They had owned his own and those of the people he cared about for far too long.
The wings he’d felt spread as he’d performed the killing curse were finally free again. His promise to Ron that he wouldn’t be sent to Azkaban had made him think of all the people who had yet to set foot on that rock. He thought he’d give them a better fate, one where they paid and suffered the way they all had. For that, he’d bring them all down with him if he had to, bury them with their greed and their hate and their secrets. He would give those leeches a posthumous purpose to their destiny. One where their pitiful existence would count for something.
The loathing he felt for the world that had caused him so much suffering, so much misplaced guilt only grew as his words became less and his mind took over others. As he focused inwards and let his trust in himself shine outwards. The ties between magic and nature, magic and life, magic and death, were obvious to him now. The threads that connected it all together were something he could see when he closed his eyes, and the need to pull at those threads increased as time passed.
So he changed, he became what some would think of as a villain, an angel fallen from grace. But he’d drank from a fountain of truth, he’d swallowed his own tears and his own pain down. He’d swallowed his protests and his cries and his overflowing anger. And they’d all settled to form the inevitable truth that he couldn’t evade for long. He was neither a martyr nor a hero, he’d conquered nothing but himself. He was nothing if not the byproduct of the world that’d shaped him. And he was all that they wished they could ever be, all that they would ever fear, and all that would bring them to their knees.
He played his role as the doting friend, the trustworthy auror, the kind adopted son and the Ministry’s pawn. He observed and he listened, he smiled when needed and he felt perverse glee at how easy it was. How nobody noticed that Judas sat at their table, sharing their bread, their fish and their wine. He moved through a world he no longer belonged to as if he did, and he shaped it to his will. Slowly but surely, he brought sheep to his pasture, fed them from his hand and let them follow him blindly. They were starving and he was the bread that gave them life. He was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He opened their minds and shackled their doubts, pouring truths into their awaiting mouths as if these were wine and he was a vine.
And all along, he craved for a steady presence at his side, biding his time as he watched from afar. He thought of her voice inside his mind, her caution and her fears still tying her down. He thought of how she’d told him to beware, how she’d cared and tended to him. How she feared for his life but would never think the danger around them was happening at his own hand. But she’d catch up, he knew she would. And when she did, he’d be there to open her eyes. He’d pry them open if he had to, let her be blinded by the darkness around them all. He’d take her hand, guiding her through this world he’d build if he could. And it would be as if she had wings too, free-flying by his side as it was always meant to be.
He’d changed and he would change the world around him too, even if it was the last thing he did. There was no doubt in his mind that if he had to, he’d lay his life down once again for her and the world they deserved. And if he didn’t make his way back this time, he’d make sure she’d be the one to carry on. For she was his one true constant, his north star and most faithful companion.