The Devil's In The Details

Chapter Three

The next time Harry saw anything it was the mousy face of a dirty woman slapping his cheeks. He groaned and tried to move but searing pain from his body stopped him before he could get away from the woman.

"He's awake, we're on the corner of-" Harry smacked the phone from her hand. "What are you doing?! You need an ambulance!"

Harry shook his head as violently as he could. "No. No hospitals."

"Sorry, kiddo, but you need help."

"No hospitals."

"Alright," She lifted her hands in surrender. "Alright. But I'm taking you to a shelter. No arguments."

"I'll be fine. Really."

She scoffed. "I really don't think so. Come on, up you get." She hoisted Harry up by his armpits. He moaned, his shoulders heavily protesting holding his weight. He toitered into standing and leaned heavily against the brick wall. Harry brushed off the woman's gentle but firm hands. And let out a deep breath. The woman started to speak again, but Harry couldn't hear her anymore.

He looked down at his wrists with trepidation. His forearms were split in two, a chasm created by the deep gorge separating the two sides of the arm. The skin on each of the sides created large flaps that wagged about as his arms shook. He was standing in a large puddle of his own blood and was well and truly soaked with it at this point. He shivered, peering up at the woman through his bangs.

"Come on now, lovie, we need to get moving."

Harry nodded slowly. He reached about and held his arms together with his hands to keep his forearms from flapping around as he moved. He shuffled beside the woman who placed a guiding hand on his lower back. He wasn't sure how he was even alive or if he was going to stay this way. He could barely feel his magical core at all and was completely sure he did not have any of his own blood left in his body after what he did.

Harry managed to more or less shuffle on his own volition next to the woman. His eyes were drooping and his body was stony and vacant. He felt ninety pounds too light and his head felt twenty pounds too heavy. By the time the pair managed to grace the door of what Harry was quietly told was the shelter, he was more than ready to collapse as though the strings had been cut from a puppet, and so that is exactly what he did. A loud clatter of furniture getting pushed around and people yelling and swearing at each other soothed him completely unconscious.

x

Inside Harry's comatose body there were some fantastical changes taking place that Harry would never have envisioned in his worst nightmares. His weakened magical core was being infected by the parasitic freeloading portion of a core someone had unwittingly left in Harry as an infant.

The nature of their connection being parasitic, if Harry were to die, or his core to cease to exist, the partial core would too, cease to exist. In the face of Harry's weakened state, with the injuries and strain on his immune system, Harry's magical core was certain to not survive the vampire blood currently coursing through his veins as well as everything else.

To continue its pitiful existence the shard slowly began to feed its own energy across the thinning barrier that was separating the two. Not all at once, no. Slowly so that it wouldn't get rejected. Eventually during the time of Harry's unconsciousness the two cores managed to merge together into one core, making it impossible to tell where the original or the parasite had once been two separate aspects. They both accepted each other and the knowledge and elements of both were blended into one.

The vampire blood raced through his empty veins and tore at his insides, forcefully healing Harry's body and mind. It was a cleansing fire that burned out any and all things that would no longer serve Harry and healed them better than they had been before. Who said you could create from nothing? First you have to destroy a few things first to make room.