Spine
He felt cold fingers dance along his spine, soft and smooth pinpricks nudging along each vertebrae curiously. Harry shifted in the bed, breath catching when the touch slowly lifted further up his back and near the nape of his neck. The touches like whispers in the dark, like the wings of a hummingbird flitting between vibrant green.
It always started this way; the touches almost drowned out by the buzzing in his ears and the soft puffs of air escaping his parted lips. It had become almost expected, the touch of death familiar despite how wrong it was to be laying out on his belly with his hands caught around the silken fabric of his pillow.
“Harry Potter…” The boy shivered, unable to stifle the movement when the voice broke the silence weighing heavily on Harry’s shoulders. It was a hiss, weak and strangled, but still, Harry felt afraid, recognizing the source of that voice when the fingers continued to touch and prod. The curiosity, always the curiosity, present in the shape of those long, gnarled fingers.
“Are you not afraid? Your death is assured, your fate sealed…” The voice crooned, saccharine as the fingers spread along Harry’s neck, a cold palm spanning out until a solid hand was resting over Harry’s neck softly.
“I am master of your fate, your life a faint light waiting to be snuffed out.”
Harry released a startled breath when the monster’s grip became tight, the pressure enough to bring life to his deadened limbs, to shake the drowsy veil that had fallen over his eyes in the dark. It was the same, every time. The threats and the seductive promises of deaths were Harry’s realities; his constant companion since holing himself inside Grimmauld Place and away from the concerned looks of his friends.
They knew he was struggling, that air was as thick as water and clay slipping between a tightened fist. It was choking and noxious, the smoke settling over his senses like a mask as he tried to fight the despair and the agony that threatened to pull him into that sweet abyss.
The sweet darkness like the one that had taken his Godfather mere weeks before…
“You’re not real,” Harry said, throat tight when the hand did not ease its tight grip on the back of his neck. It was a heavy weight, a presence that Harry had grown accustomed to but despised all the same. Ever since the monster had broken open the connection, had exploited the sliver of emotion that tied them both as one, the man was a poison that refused to depart. A presence that slipped between the cracks Sirius’s death caused.
Harry hated it, despised the weakness and the way he simply gave in. But what did fighting ever do for him? What did struggling and screaming ever amount to than the death of all those he cared for?
“I am very real, Harry. I am as real as the air you are breathing between your lips, as real as these fingers pressing into your skin. I am alive and here, the darkness in your soul…” The voice purred, and Harry shifted against the softness beneath his naked body, unashamed and unsurprised that he was laid bare for the world to see.
In his head, there were no barriers between them. No separation between their consciousness. They were one and the same, the dark and the light dancing precariously in a waltz that never came to an end.
It was the only time Harry had ever felt alive; the bursts of anger, pleasure, pain, and amusement in the monster’s mind the break from the monotony that had sunk its claws into his sternum.
“But you are not here, are you? You touch me but there is no pain. You speak to me, but there is no terror or rage. You are empty, a shadow of your real self in this room,” Harry whispered, mouth shooting open when the hand at his neck sank sharp claws into the tender skin—the pain as decadent as the fear that jolted low in the pit of his stomach.
These were the first real emotions he’d felt all day, his emptiness like a cloak wrapped around his shoulders as he tried to function throughout the day. To pretend that everything was fine, that the death of the only family he had left did not tear his heart in two.
“Is that what you want, Harry? Do you want pain? For your mind to shatter and break with the power only I have?” The monster asked, and Harry groaned when the fingers released their tight grip on his neck and racked sharp claws along his back, sharp pain shredding more of the veil of apathy that clung to his mind.
Harry was thrilled.
“If I said yes, w-would it matter?” Harry moaned when the nails sliced through his skin like butter, his skin breaking open and oozing vibrant crimson down until it trickled down his sides. The rivulets were like tiny fingers at his back, thin like the strands of hair tickling his forehead as they stained the white sheets beneath him.
It was always like this. Harry’s blood always stained in the white; evidence of the man’s undivided attention.
Harry smiled despite himself, the twist derisive as the hand smeared blood readily against his back, the warmth of his blood overshadowing the iciness of the man’s touch.
“It would not, but there is satisfaction to be found in hearing you say the words...for my greatest enemy to fall to his knees in supplication.”
Harry arched his back when another cold hand wound its way into his hair before yanking on the strands. The man’s hand was like fire, the cold biting so deeply into Harry’s flesh that he could hardly contain his pleased sounds; the pain an addiction that cut through his emptiness and the overwhelming sadness that threatened to push him over the edge.
“Beg, Harry Potter. Tell me what you want.”
Harry whined, unable to contain his sounds when a hand dug sharp nails into his hip, the burn as delicious as the sharp agony slowly building at his forehead, his scar buzzing like a livewire.
“Say my name, beg your enemy to deliver you from the emptiness in your heart, to slip life into your bones…”
Harry’s lips parted, and he swallowed before closing his eyes. He couldn’t see the creature, but he did not need to. He knew who this presence was. He was his constant companion, their fates irrevocably intertwined.
There was no release, no escape.
Harry let himself sink, and voice the words that had been wanting to slip from off his tongue since the monster had arrived.
“Please, Voldemort...hurt me,” Harry supplicated before the magic sizzled within his belly, the tight grip on his hip and the sharp press of the man’s fingers on his hair exploding like fireworks; colors flashing in the back of Harry’s eyes as the cloying emptiness and sadness inside evaporated into gut-wrenching pain.
Harry’s scar exploded with agony, and he screamed. The sound soul shattering as Harry began to writhe and tears began to gather at the corner of his eyes from the delicious pain that wracked over him.
More.
Harry wanted to feel. Even if the agony came at the hands of the man that had ripped everything away.
“As you wish...my Horcrux.”