Snitches get Stitches

Harry blinked at Remus.

Harry blinked again.

Harry blinked very quickly a third time.

When Remus’ face didn’t change and the words echoing in Harry’s ears were the same, Harry just stood up and walked to their fridge to get a bottle of whisky off the top.

“At some point, I should scold you for drinking,” Remus said idly from the table. He didn’t say anything else while Harry got two shot glasses and brought them to the table as well.

Harry was in a daze when he poured himself a drink and then Remus. The taste of the whisky and the burn in his throat helped Harry make sense of what all Remus just told him…

There was something called horcruxes, and Voldemort made seven of them. Dumbledore destroyed six before trapping Voldemort in the dungeon of a castle in Nurmengard… it was guarded, but the only way Voldemort could leave was by losing his magic.

And Harry… Harry had a horcrux inside of him.

It was what kept him alive nearly fourteen years ago and it would keep Voldemort alive until after Harry was dead.

Harry was oddly relieved, despite knowing that his life was keeping Voldemort alive. Voldemort was trapped, he was done for.

That wasn’t what made Harry want to sick up though.

“So they’re calling me a death eater,” Harry whispered to the table after slamming his shot glass down. It was sick… it was…

Harry just didn’t have the words to describe how sick it made Harry feel to know that he was being accused of being one of Voldemort’s followers.

“You’re not being prosecuted,” Remus said slowly after taking his own shot. “However—”

Harry started pouring a second shot for himself at the ‘however’.

“However… you may be called before the Wizengamot to testify,” Remus said apologetically. He genuinely looked unhappy when Harry stared at him after taking his second shot.

“Testify to what?” Harry demanded. “They didn’t believe me before! What makes anyone think they’ll believe me now?”

Harry’s imagination began running wild as he imagined himself in Azkaban, surrounded by the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy… or maybe they’d lock Harry in a dungeon with Voldemort…

“Harry? Harry!” Remus reached across the table and snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s face, shaking him from his imaginings.

“If Albus is unable to keep you from being called then I will ensure that you are called as an adult,” Remus stressed to Harry. “Minors are unable to testify with the use of Veritaserum, adults are given the option.”

“So… so if they ask me if I’m- one of them… they have to believe me if I take Veritaserum?” Harry checked.

“They should, yes,” Remus said.

Harry poured himself a third shot when Remus’ answer wasn’t exactly reassuring. The warmth in his stomach from the booze was outshined for a moment by a sharp pain in his arm that made Harry wince.

“And my arm?” Harry asked desperately. It had been nearly a week and if Voldemort was trapped then… then there was nothing stopping him from torturing Harry through the mark for the rest of their tied-together-lives.

Remus stalled, Harry could tell, as he poured himself another shot. Harry’s brain was beginning to feel fuzzy, but he could still recognize hesitation.

“Severus has no similar pains, which leads Albus and I to believe that Voldemort is specifically targeting you,” Remus said slowly. He took his drink and then began spinning the shot glass between his hands.

Harry kept his eyes on the glass while he listened to Remus. It would be worse to hear there was no hope for Harry’s arm if he had to see the pity on Remus’ face as he said it.

“So what can I do?” Harry asked.

“As of now? Nothing.”

Harry nodded in understanding while he clutched his arm to his chest. Harry had dealt with the pain for a week straight by then.

It was fine.

And then there was a flash of fire down Harry’s forearm and he just dropped his head to the table and screamed.

Harry screamed until the screams choked him and he started crying.

It was so unfair.

Harry wasn’t someone who believed in ‘fairness’, he wasn’t completely stupid. But to tell Harry ‘congrats, the man who killed your parents will live just a day longer than you will and - oh - in the meantime, hope you enjoy constant pain!’ was just… it was so unfair that Harry couldn’t bear it.

Remus went around the table and held Harry while he cried and scream his frustrations out. When Harry began clawing at his left arm, Remus grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“I didn’t say that I gave up,” Remus swore. He pinned Harry’s wrist to the table when Harry went to claw the skin off again.

“What’s the point?!” Harry lifted his head and blinked at Remus through his tears while he let out a hysterical laugh. “This is mental, Remus! He- he killed my parents! He killed Cedric!” Harry shoved Remus back to jump to his feet.

“I didn’t want this!” Harry stormed, gesturing to his arm. Harry began pacing irritably, stumbling some from the exhaustion-driven lack of coordination that was only made worse by the booze.

“And you think the same court that didn’t believe me about a dementor attack will believe me now?” Harry laughed again, truly feeling as if he was losing his mind. “MY GODFATHER DOESN’T BELIEVE ME, REMUS! WHY WOULD THEY?”

Remus didn’t say anything while Harry ranted and raved. Harry knew it wasn’t Remus’ fault, Remus was the only one to believe Harry when he went to him, but Harry was too far past ‘upset’ to control himself.

It wasn’t until Sirius stumbled in the kitchen with just a pair of pajama bottoms on and a scowl that Harry fell silent.

“Why are we screaming at six in the bloody morning?” Sirius complained.

“It’s fucking nine pm, idiot,” Harry snarled.

Remus was an inappropriate target for Harry’s anger, Sirius was not.

Sirius scowled at Harry as he padded through the kitchen on bare feet to get to the sink. Remus shot Harry a very clear look of warning, but Harry was itching for a fight.

“Why are you screaming at nine pm then?” Sirius asked while he filled a cup with water.

“Because it turns out that you’re not the stupidest person I know,” Harry said seriously as he drifted closer to Sirius. “There’s a whole community of idiots just as brain dead as you.”

“Harry, stop,” Remus said sharply. He got to his feet, but Harry couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to.

“I’m an idiot?” Sirius turned to face Harry and Harry kept his expression as patronizing as he could.

“I’m the idiot that gave up my life for you!” Sirius said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And yet, I wish you weren’t.”

Harry didn’t know if he meant that or not. Harry loved Sirius, he was the last of Harry’s family, but Harry wanted a chance to make someone hurt as much as he was hurting.

“You know what?” Sirius stepped closer to Harry and his eyes flickered down to Harry’s exposed left arm before he curled his lip up at Harry’s face. “That makes two of us.”

Harry smiled.

And then Harry pulled his hand back and slugged Sirius in the stomach as hard as he could.

Remus shouted at them but Sirius was already retaliating with an uppercut fist that caught Harry on the chin. Harry swung his own fist toward Sirius’ face and it just made contact when there was suddenly a thick wall of magic forcing them apart.

“Enough!” Remus shouted. He held his wand up and set off a bang like a gun when Harry and Sirius began screaming at each other.

Harry glared silently at Sirius, seeing every person who thought Harry asked to be branded in his godfather’s grey eyes.

Sirius glared back and Harry imagined that he saw everything he despised about his family when he looked at Harry.

“Sirius, you need to go shave and shower,” Remus said firmly. “Harry…”

“I’m leaving,” Harry said, making the decision for Remus.

Harry knew that Sirius needed to get to London to officially have his name cleared since Pettigrew had been captured, Remus brought him a portkey. Harry just didn’t want to stick around and see how happy Sirius would be by the news.

Not when Harry couldn’t see any real silver linings in his immediate future.

Harry almost went to ask Ian to go running with him. Ian said it helped him clear his mind when everything was too much. Harry only changed his mind last minute when he decided that he wanted to think on everything for a while.

Voldemort was captured.

Harry had a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside him.

It should probably have bothered Harry much more than it did. Harry already had his mark, what was a little piece of a soul that only ever occasionally gave Harry a headache in comparison?

Harry wondered what the news reports would say… if they would call Harry a death eater or not.

Harry wondered who would believe them if they did.

Hermione and Ron wouldn’t, Harry knew that for a fact. They had believed Harry when he told them everything that happened from the time he entered the maze until the moment Snape helped Harry escape, even the parts that Harry could hardly believe himself…

Harry didn’t know how long he had been in the small cell. It couldn’t have been too long because Harry was still conscious and he hadn’t ate anything since before the third task.

Hunger was the least of Harry’s problems though.

Every time Harry had to see the dark black tattoo on his sore red arm it made him want to scream. It was the same mark that had been displayed at the Quidditch World Cup and the same one that Hagrid once told him had been displayed above his parents’ house…

Harry was curled in a ball against the wall and he jolted when he heard the dungeon door opening. His muscles were still trembling from the last round of torture and Harry thought he might break if they did it again.

“Kiss my robes and it will all end.”

“Fuck you.”

Harry knew that as soon as he broke, the game would end and Voldemort would kill him. It wasn’t that Harry was opposed to death at that point, it was just that Harry didn’t want to leave the earth with Voldemort’s mark on his arm and his lips on his robes.

It sounded like only one pair of footsteps that approached Harry. They were quiet, soft. Too quiet to be Voldemort who only visited Harry with an audience and too soft to be one of the masked wizards that took too much pleasure out of making Harry scream.

“Mister Potter?”

Harry lifted his head from his knees and wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t already go mad. Harry shook his head some and just stared at a woman he only recognized from a very brief meeting over the summer.

Narcissa Malfoy stood just outside Harry’s cell and she had the nervous look on her face of a person who knew they were doing something wrong.

“Come closer,” Narcissa whispered to him. She pulled something from her pocket and Harry saw that it was a meat pie.

Harry scrambled closer to her, not even worrying if it was poisoned or not. It would be better if it was, Harry could maintain a single scrap of dignity if he died from poison rather than Voldemort’s wand.

“Why?” Harry asked in a raspy whisper when he took it from her. Narcissa conjured a cup and filled it with water before offering it to Harry as well.

Harry gulped down the endless water until his stomach felt bloated. As soon as he couldn’t drink any more, the cup disappeared and Harry took a starving bite of the pie.

“Draco was born just a couple of months after you,” Narcissa told Harry quietly. She stood up from her kneeling position and swiped the dust from the floor off her robes.

“You look just like your mother, you know,” Narcissa said as she stared down at Harry. “Except your hair, that’s all your father.”

When Narcissa turned around and left just as abruptly as she arrived, Harry wondered if he had imagined the entire encounter. He stuffed a tiny piece of the crust from the pie in his pocket, if only as proof that he hadn’t entirely lost his mind.

Harry wondered if Narcissa had been arrested.

Harry wondered if Narcissa told the aurors that Harry was a death eater.

Harry kind of doubted it…

By the time Harry made it back to his house, it was late and he was tripping over his own feet in pure exhaustion. Every time Harry blinked, it became that much harder to open his eyes back up.

Remus was on the porch, probably waiting for Harry, and was quick to jump up and offer Harry a shoulder to lean on for the walk from the gate to the porch.

“‘M sorry,” Harry told Remus. He yawned widely and was mostly dead-weight while Remus opened the front door.

“It’s been a rather eventful day,” Remus said evenly. He helped Harry get inside and Harry just took a few steps to the couch before landing face first across it.

“Try to sleep, Harry,” Remus said as something warm and soft covered Harry up. “We will find a solution soon.”

Harry only hummed.

Remus was an optimist, apparently. It was amusing in the way that he was wrong.

Harry spent a restless night on the couch, tossing and turning, even occasionally whimpering, every time his arm burned.

Harry imagined that Voldemort was simply sitting in his cell, stroking his arm purely to ensure that Harry was as miserable as humanly possible. Perhaps he wanted Harry to be desperate enough to end his own life since he wouldn’t get the chance.

It was a good plan if so.

Harry spent the next day in a daze, not comprehending anything anyone said to him. Mandy offered to find Harry something to wake him up when she saw how exhausted he was, but the little blue speckled pill only made Harry feel jittery.

Even the teachers at their school seemed to understand that Harry wasn’t human that day. They either ignored him or perhaps yelled at him, Harry couldn’t be sure.

“You need to see a doctor,” Mandy told Harry after school. Ian nodded in agreement and then grabbed Harry by the elbow when he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and nearly fell.

“Doctors can’t fix it,” Harry said morosely.

Doctors couldn’t fix it. Remus couldn’t fix it.

Horcruxes and horrible marks and agony until death.

“Why can’t a doctor fix it?” Mandy demanded. “My dad had a prison tat that got infected and they just like gave him some antibiotics.”

“‘Cause it’s a magic mark,” Harry murmured. “Morsmordre, magic.”

When Mandy stared at Harry incredulously, Ian shook his head at her.

“He’s sleep deprived and fucked up on Vyvanse, he’s out of it,” Ian said.

Harry agreed wholeheartedly. He was out of it.

It was so far away from Harry that there was no getting back inside.

Mandy and Ian left Harry in his peacefully silent house when they realized that Harry was barely a human.

How long could a person go without sleep? How long until Harry’s brain refused to work and his organs shut down in protest?

Harry would become a ghost, a mere shell of the person he once had been.

Mandy would move on and probably start dating Lip. Ian would find a new best mate. Hermione would cry and then start listing all the ways that she could have helped him sleep if she were there.

And Voldemort would win.

Harry jumped from the chair he’d been sitting in for what suddenly felt like hours at that last thought. Harry didn’t break after a week of torture, he wouldn’t let Voldemort win.

If Voldemort won then everyone would die because he was a snake of a man who only wanted to eat muggleborns.

Harry walked to the kitchen without even thinking too much about it. There was a half-formed plan in his head, something involving removing the arm and having Remus heal the wound.

It was a good plan. It would save the muggles from being killed by a snake.

Harry grabbed the handle of the sharpest knife he could and put it just at the crook of his elbow.

Were bones hard to cut through? Was the knife sharp enough? Was Harry strong enough?

When another flash of fire burned clear down to Harry’s fingertips, he clenched his jaw shut and started sawing.

Twenty-Four Hours Later…

Lip laid in his bed, flipping through a new tech magazine he nicked from the computer lab.

There was another Machine Mash contest coming up… a thousand dollar prize for first place. It wasn’t like Lip was fucking anyone to take up his time. Karen was still being a bitch and Lip just didn’t have the urge to replace her yet.

Lip could enter the contest with all his free time, but he’d need to get a fuck ton of shit to fix up his bot before he could. Those sigma pi dicks had destroyed his little bot last time. With enough upgrades though, Lip liked his odds.

Maybe he’d see if Ian wanted to help him steal the new laser from the technical college downtown. Lip could add that to his bot, crush those jerks, and give Fiona the money when he won.

Lip was making a mental list of all the shit he’d need and where he could get it from when his cell went off. Lip snagged it from where it was charging on the bookcase beside the bed and frowned at the private caller.

Fuck it.

“Hello?” Lip answered the call and wasn’t expecting the person on the other end.

“Lip? It’s Harry.”

Lip raised a surprised eyebrow. Harry hadn’t said a single word to him in a little over a week. The last thing Harry said was that he would talk to Lip when Lip apologized to Mandy.

And the last thing Lip told him was that hell would freeze over before he apologized for the truth.

Lip was annoyed every time he went to smoke or fuck around town and Harry refused to speak to him. It was worse when Lip saw Harry and Ian being all buddy-buddy. Sure, Ian could fuck Harry’s ex in Harry’s bed and it be kosher but fuck if Harry could handle some criticism on Mandy.

“What’s happening?” Lip asked.

“Er… listen, I only know one number… but I need you to go tell Remus that I’m at the hospital and it would be brilliant if he could come get me.”

Lip grinned a little to himself. Ian had been asking about Harry all day when he didn’t show up for school. Lip wasn’t surprised that Harry wound up in the hospital, he had looked rough for days.

“Sure,” Lip agreed with a careless shrug. It was no skin off his back to let Harry’s uncle know where he was. “What’s your room number?”

“No idea.”

“Go look at your door or ask a nurse,” Lip told him.

“Er… the doors don’t have numbers on them…”

Lip closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he began to put some pieces together.

“Harry, dude… what part of the hospital are you in?”

Harry cleared his throat and Lip could practically picture the sheepish look he must have on his face.

“The psychiatric unit,” Harry said after a moment. “But I’m not bloody insane, Lip. I really need Remus to come get me. This is entirely Sirius’ fault.”

“Yeah?” Lip was full on grinning, not that Harry could see. “And how did Sirius get you fucking committed?”

“I… This is the part that sounds insane, alright? But I tried to cut off my arm and Sirius had me bloody committed.”

Yeah, that would do it.

Lip was still laughing about Harry’s bullshit when he knocked on the next door house.

Only someone with a stupid ass plan like Harry made could try and fix an infection and end up on the psych floor. Harry was like his own worst fucking enemy.

When nobody answered Lip’s hard knock, Lip just turned the doorknob and let himself in.

“Hello?” Lip called in the quiet house. “Hey, Remus? Sirius?”

Nobody answered.

Lip walked through the entire house looking for either of Harry’s uncles. The place was empty though.

Sirius was probably at the Alibi, but if he was the one who had Harry committed then he wouldn’t exactly be gung-ho to sign him back out. Remus was the one Harry wanted, but his ass wasn’t home.

Lip went back out front and made himself comfortable on the porch swing with a joint he found in what he assumed was Sirius’ bedroom. As far as Lip knew, Remus didn’t wear gay ass eyeliner, and there had been a tube of it on the dresser beside the joint Lip took.

As it got later and later, Lip began to worry some that Remus wasn’t returning home that night.

What the fuck was Harry supposed to do? Just stick around psych long enough to get pumped full of pills and transferred to a group home when no guardian presented themselves?

Fuck that.

When Lip’s phone told him it was midnight, Lip decided to take matters in his own hands.

First stop was his own bedroom to grab his toolkit under the bed and wake Ian up.

“What’s going on?” Ian asked after Lip shook him awake.

“I’m going to bust Harry out of the hospital. You coming?”

Ian rubbed his eyes and then just sighed loudly.

“Yeah, alright. We need to get Mandy too.”

Lip didn’t think they needed Mandy to go get Harry, but they did need a car. Steve’s black Taurus was parked out front and Lip just swiped his keys off the kitchen counter.

Steve probably stole it in the first place so he couldn’t exactly get his panties in a twist if Lip stole it back.

“Why’s Harry in the hospital?” Ian asked once they were both in the car.

Lip turned the ignition and couldn’t hold back a smirk when it turned right on and purred silently.

“He tried to cut his arm off so Sirius had him committed,” Lip said.

Ian rolled his eyes before slumping back in his seat while Lip pulled away from the curb.

“That sounds like some dumb ass shit Harry would do,” Ian said. “So our grand plan here is… what? Break him out of the psych ward?”

“That’s actually exactly what I was thinking,” Lip said with faux-surprise. “Dude, are you like a fucking mind reader?”

“It’s a shit plan without Mandy,” Ian said, ignoring Lip’s sarcasm. “Seeing as she’s the only one of us who’s actually been on the psych floor.”

Lip swore and did a quick u-turn to go back toward the Milkovich house.

“And I’m just not supposed to say shit about Harry’s girlfriend being a wack job?” Lip asked his brother.

Ian shrugged and began fucking with the radio, changing the station from the yuppie shit Steve had on to a rock station.

“If you ever want to be friends with Harry again, yeah,” Ian said.

It was a tough call to make.

Mock Mandy for being a psycho slut or resist the urge to get his British sidekick back…

“Fine,” Lip said. He pulled the car in front of the Milkovich house and laid on horn. “But I’m not fucking apologizing.”

There was only so much Lip was willing to do and he was already breaking Harry out of the psych ward. If Harry didn’t accept that as an apology then fuck him.