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There is an impossible vastness to his dreamscape. Not a maze, like he’d been warned, no trick, no right wall to press against and lead him back to life, no great, bulky monster for him to slay, to defeat and return the scales of his emotional state to what they should be, possessing some semblance of balance; he’s not stranded on the figurative island of his life made manifest, no better than a pile of sand trickling off hard, jagged bedrock, forced to paddle out into the tumultuous seas of his mind.
He’d been prepared heavily by his mind healer, the two of them discussing the various dreamscapes he may find himself in, what they could mean. It was always up to Harry to interpret what he should do, they could offer no help with that, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t familiarize himself with what may happen. To hypothesize what he may have to do, deal with: what gory, repressed emotions might rise to the surface, bubbling like lava and Bubotuber pus, like all of the viscous, violent substances the greater world may possess, not malevolent in nature, but certainly in effect.
Harry walks atop rolling hills furred with long blades of grass that are soft to the touch, waving in a non-existent breeze, tickling his exposed ankles rather than scratching at him, only biting when he begins to drift, when his thoughts turn to the world he’d left, reality. These hills occasionally shift into never-ending flat plains that do end, when he isn’t looking, when he blinks, scattered copses of holly trees calling him over, their red berries visibly plump, juice impossibly thick, bitter as can be, bitter like his anger, the repressed type that had long concentrated into something like resentment. He has seen dark blue, clearly deep, glittering lakes with gem-stone shores that are—if the system for interpretation his mind healer has equipped him with is correct—supposed to be the watery gates to his deepest secrets, the kind that require him to swim, or to sink. He hasn’t been able to get close enough to make the plunge yet.
It is lush, and it is empty. There are no shades of the past left for him to confront, to stumble upon as he meanders, as his breath comes harder, his soul smothering under the weight of the potion his mind healer had finally allowed him to try, satisfied with his progress. It was the last one in a series, weakened concoctions not preparing him for the dread that now infuses him, the overwhelming self-consciousness he has to battle to make each step. Muscles are of no use here; it’s all in the mind.
Harry can imagine the flurry of panic that his physical body, essentially comatose in the private practice, is witness to. He’s been under too long.
What he can’t imagine, is what he’s missing.
Harry pivots, and his surroundings shift. He walks forward into another holly forest, but he doesn’t tug at the sprig of berries, doesn’t dive to peek into the underbrush, the surface breaking roots and thick foliage going ignored. There’s no peace here, not when he’s been so deeply impressed with the knowledge that the longer he stays here, the lesser his chances of leaving, but the consequences, without room for negotiation, so demanding, is, in a vile way, comforting.
The Man-Who-Conquered is a title that no longer rests so heavily on his shoulders, but, with each passing year, he feels a different weight begin to drag him down, increasing in intensity. There are knots in him that cannot be massaged out by another’s hand, not resolvable with a pointed elbow to the back. Soul knots, soul tangles, soul gaps— a variety of terms to describe the same condition, same affliction: pieces of a broken whole unable to heal, to unite.
It’s not in any way comparable to horcruxes, those eternal severances. If what Voldemort did is akin to dismembering oneself, piece by piece, with a dull and slippery butterknife, Harry, as he gathered the fruits of his labors, of his life— intentional or, mostly, not—has sliced his hands up, thorns fed with his blood. Never healing wounds remain, rotting down to the bone.
It’s not a perfect comparison. He’s here to cleanse himself, to experience the most intimate renewal; to peer into himself and not to forge forward, but to sit, to acknowledge what stirs within him, and then, only then, to incise it.
The urge arises for the same reason he’s been secretly going to a mind healer for the past three years, why he still fends off Hermione’s not-so-subtle suggestions, Ron’s too-hard claps on the back, and Ginny’s pointed raise of the brow whenever either of the two happen and he just shrugs it off: the people he cares about are worried about him. How could he not attempt to cure himself? Ease their worries?
And yet, he is, in some ways, prideful. There’s an inexplicable shame to the notion of telling them, admitting that he hadn’t been able to handle being the Chosen One, their Chosen One, without cracking under the pressure. That their concerns are real, and that too many times, the monotonous mundanities of his life feel no less insurmountable than the inevitability of death did to Voldemort, constantly chasing, nipping at the heel. Their recovering society is not one he can enjoy, not when such faults run through him, never letting the foundation of his being settle. When there has been something wrong with him for far too wrong.
Harry wakes up with a hand already reaching for the holly wand on his nightstand, the other retucking a spare under his pillow; he has to see a masseuse on a weekly basis, courtesy of Fleur’s vast connections, to ensure his body doesn’t lock up, so very, constantly tense. Life isn't supposed to be that way. He isn’t.
So he’s here. And so, he might die.
Nothing new, he thinks, and a voice agrees.
For the first time, there’s a relief to being confronted with Voldemort. This wisp of him is appropriately translucent, a real shade. If not for the dulled redness of his eyes, Harry wouldn’t be able to notice a difference, given the greyscale color scheme the man had favored in life.
He anticipates some sort of confrontation, but, anti-climatically, Voldemort disappears. No slow, spectral flickering. Harry blinks, and then he’s gone.
A soft thump catches his attention, and before he can process it, he’s chasing after a rabbit, wonderfully rotund, a fluffy sort, the type that Teddy no doubt had the stuffed version of, somewhere among the piles of his play room.
It escapes— just like the forest.
Harry, mostly used to it by now, simply walks forward, now heading towards the glittering shores of one of the many mind-lakes he’s seen. It’s nearly a shock when finally, he is allowed to venture into it, the landscape not another shimmering mirage, stepping onto the rounded gems that compose the shore. They’re eroded into smooth shapes, pleasing to the touch, which he only knows because his feet are suddenly bare.
There is no sun, no sky. The lake reflects clouds that do not exist; the gems reflect light with no source. The landscape simply fades off into a grey, smog-like hue if he squints far enough. His shoes are gone and his trousers are now rucked up. There is sun on his skin, non-existent warmth, and it’s only the sudden presence of it that allows him to register just how cold he’d been.
The lake winks enticingly. He strides forward, and forward, but the water never touches him. It laps, and splashes, but not a drop hits him. An invisible boundary; another setback.
With a sigh, Harry begins to circle the perimeter.
“Maybe,” he says, in the habit of speaking aloud here, “There’s a clue on the other side.”
“There are many things to be found on the other side,” a lowered voice, no longer a whisper, breathes into his ears, “But clues are not one of them.”
Harry snorts. It’s reactive, and not entirely intentional. The gravitas to the voice, to Voldemort’s shade, is ridiculous.
“The other side,” Harry muses, sarcasm bleeding through, “I wonder what that could mean.”
Hands on both of his shoulders, fingers wrapping down to the edges of his collarbones, grasping the thick, corded muscle there, non-physical, but there, “Death is perpetual; your luck is not.”
Tick-tock.
Voldemort disappears again.
After a while of futile circling, he sits. Somewhere along the way, his shirt had changed into a tanktop, the old, weathered kind, yellowed and soft, a familiar hand-me-down. Off in the distance, two children splash happily, faces and words indistinct, though grins and joy evident.
“Perhaps,” Harry pieces together, “Not all of my soul-wounds are mine.”
“Perhaps.”
A warm hand covers his eyes. The skin isn’t white to the point of translucency, instead, it’s simply pale. Slightly pink. It feels just like the sun. The voice is slightly louder as well, like the faint murmur of a friend from across a crowded room, waving.
The water laps at Harry’s toes.
“The mind,” Voldemort says as Harry walks in, still blinded, “Has ultimate control. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no state that cannot be altered.”
The water is up to his waist. It’s freezing, and then boiling. It’s every temperature possible and then some. It is agony.
“I do not exist,” the shade admits, after a long pause, “I am a product of you. I am a residue. But,” his voice gains a smug, cruel undertone that instinctively makes Harry hold his breath, “You believe I do. So, I am.”
That same, urging pressure on Harry’s eyes drags him down to the depths. It never grows stronger, doesn’t claw at his skin, nails curving in. It just forces him down, until logically, all that is left is for Harry to drown.
“I see you,” Harry says, even with his vision obscured, even as he is supposed to be gurgling, “I see you on the back of my eyelids when I blink, I see you in my dreams, in the corners of rooms I haven’t dusted for a while.”
“You make me,” Voldemort chokes out, because Harry wants him to, because Harry finally understands what makes this last potion so dangerous.
It’s him.
“The adage of being one’s own worst enemy is coy at best, and blatantly, shamelessly, and worst of all, noxiously self-flagellating on most all other occasions,” Tom chatters on, because, as Harry swims further down, reaching for an end he can’t fathom, as his teeth begin to crack, and then fall out, and then slot back, broken pieces shredding his gums, hearing his own internal narration translated into a parody of what that schoolboy he’d seen in Dumbledore’s pensieve would say is horribly, inappropriately amusing, “To believe that is to believe, even if without acknowledgement, that you are a beast to your whims, a dog to your desires, gnawing on the bone of your very own self-respect in an attempt to excuse away your failures, your failings, your-”
Harry thinks him away.
Harry swims for a longer while, until he finally lets himself imagine it, his rotting center. He sinks into the sensation of disgust, lets his mind wander intentionally to all of the times he’s drifted off into the past when he was supposed to be present, to a time when his forehead was still scarred.
It’s repulsive, his yearning, but, the mind healer had long, albeit unintentionally, confirmed that it wasn’t psychosomatic. That being a horcrux, and then not, so distinctly not, had stripped him down. That, Voldemort’s absence, as positive as it was for everyone Harry loves, for the people he would, has, died for, will only continue to degrade him. Continue to hurt.
Down in his depths, the lake stops. When he lifts an arm, Harry can touch the water, but is dry. It hangs over his head.
It is barren, here. Not even sand, not even stone, just that same rolling smog, that grey, just off-shade from the white of Kings Cross station, the white of Dumbledore’s beard.
Harry can feel his toes, his fingers, can hear his mind healer speaking to a nurse. The rot within him remains; the urge does.
“I am,” Voldemort says, loud and clear, just as the grey turns eye-lid red, just as Harry blinks awake to the real world, “We are.”