Magic Never Dies (Harmione)

Chapter 16

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This time there was no fooling around, and both of them were fairly certain what the other wanted.

Harry had felt relatively safe at first. I'm only... in his mind. This isn't real. He can't actually do anything...

Wrong.

He could feel pain; he was still connected to his own body and Voldemort was more experienced in traveling the pathway between them than he. Voldemort swam through Harry's veins like a snake, nipping at nerve endings here, coiling and pressing on raw tissue there. He was everywhere; behind his eyes, at the base of his skull, sliding down his spine probing for anything that hurt. Harry knew that back there, where he really was, he was probably fighting a scream and thrashing around in a vain attempt to displace the sensations. Here in Voldemort's mind he experienced it as if from a distance without hope of affecting it in any way; shapeless, limbless, formless but still sensate.

Harry pushed back at the waves of hatred and disgust that rushed like a tide to keep him from his goal. Occasionally if he swam strongly enough against the current he could even see the view from Voldemort's own eyes, and it was with a small thrill of victory that he noted he too had brought his enemy down. Voldemort lay in the back of a darkened moving vehicle, repeatedly bumped and jolted as it careened over rough roads. It occurred to Harry that Voldemort was reduced to having to use Muggle transport because he could not risk apparition with Harry conscious within him.

'The great and powerful Lord Voldemort, and I could splinch him,' Harry thought, and a glimmer of laughter cut through his determination and unease. 'I can see it now...Oops, the Dark Lord's lost his balls for real this time!'

Voldemort apparently missed the humor in this realization, and Harry realized the snakelike presence within his body was heading south as well. Big potential ouch. Time to get a move on, then.

It was a less like swimming now, more flinging himself against and through a flood of images, most of them twisted and horrific. A dementor would starve in here. This was the kind of black hole of anything hopeful and good Harry had never been able to imagine before and he felt it sapping his own limited supply of optimism like a ravenous, feeding beast. He knew now why Dumbledore had tried to show him that Voldemort had begun as human, had once been a child before the lure of his own magic had twisted him so. If there was anything human left in here it was buried deep. Harry tried to tell himself if he went back far enough the oppressive evil would diminish... but what he sought was in the very heart of the darkness.

He was not exactly sure when the missing horcrux had been made or hidden, but he did know what memories he would have to pass if his journey was a linear one. Voldemort would be sure to force Harry to relive that dreaded night... or would he? How closely was he willing or able to look at that moment? Did Voldemort perceive it as his ultimate triumph and glory for the fact that his sick horcrux plan had worked to ensured his raw survival, or did he see it as a power-sapping humiliation at the hands of a woman and year- old child?

Images bombarded him; people screaming, begging, and the inevitable burst of green. He knew they were seeing Voldemort but as Harry worked through his enemies' memories and watched through his enemies' eyes his victims seemed to be imploring Harry himself. His heart felt quite literally like it was bleeding with the sheer wretched waste of so many lives, lost for so little.