More breaths, coming faster. The feeling that he was hyperventilating, blended with a feeling that he wasn't breathing at all. He forced himself to stop it, to slow, to think beneath the fire burning in his mind. To listen, and stay aware.
Clink of glass as a vial was opened, and a smell wafted through the air. Cinnamon, clove, and other things he couldn't identify, though Merlin only knew he'd smelled them at least a hundred times during Potions class. "It merely awaits the finishing touch," Snape was explaining, the position of his voice making Harry suspect a kneel, as well. It was all he could do not to kick out in Snape's general direction, and this time, the violence wouldn't be a feint to fool Voldemort.
"Ah yes, fresh blood." Was Voldemort actually licking his lips? Sounds like it, Harry thought, managing to get his mind off Snape. He found to his disgust that he could actually smell the blade on that knife, could smell his own blood from last time still coating it in dried flakes. Or was that Wormtail's blood as well? Another vision flashed through his mind, an older one. Wormtail, cutting off his own hand, the sight so gruesome that even as a memory it made Harry ill. Had Wormtail used the same knife, though, the same one he'd used to bleed Harry?
At that moment, Harry couldn't actually remember, but decided that the idea of his blood and Pettigrew's being mingled was the most disgusting thing he'd ever heard.
It was almost a mercy that nobody gave him any longer to hold the thought. Someone moved behind him--Lucius, he guessed--and without any further ceremony at all, the manacle was shoved up towards his forearm and his left wrist was slashed. Strange that it didn't hurt much at all. Were his arms gone numb from being pinioned so long behind him? Or was it just the fact that after all those needles, his nerve endings had had about as much as they could take? Either way, it was a mercy that the vicious cut felt no worse, really, than when he'd stabbed himself with his quill.
He felt blood dripping down his fingers, though that sensation seemed muted, too, and realized only slowly that his fingers were touching something made of glass. He was bleeding into the vial, completing the Potion. He heard it froth as his blood hit it, smelled the spicy odour once again, though this time it seemed the spices had gone rank and sour. How long they let him bleed, he didn't know. It seemed like hours, but it also seemed like it passed in just a moment. Harry let his head loll forward, his jaw slack, and wished like hell that even if they were going burn him as they'd said, somebody would give him a fucking drink of water, first.
Another clink of glass, the potion capped, though Harry felt the blood continue to drip down his fingers. He heard it spilling onto the platform, splashing against the wood.
"Enemy's Bane," Voldemort murmured in tones of ecstasy as the liquid in the vial sloshed slightly, as though he was holding the Potion up to the moonlight to examine it this way and that. "But more potent than the last few batches you've made up for me, Severus."
"No doubt, my Lord," came the Potions Master's voice.
"Burn him. Now," was the answering command, ringing out in the darkness that was Harry's mind.
No wood at his feet, no kindling carefully arranged, but these were wizards. They didn't need props to their theatrical. "Incendio Conflagare," Lucius' voice calmly intoned.
And Harry began to burn from the inside out, his magical core lighting like a torch, the fire blazing all the way to the bottom of his soul.
Strangely enough, it was a familiar sensation, one not so very different from the mental fire he could create himself. Without conscious thought or decision, he felt himself snapping fully into the image of his fire, more completely than ever before. Fire burning, fire raging, fire chasing demons from his mind, from his core.
Firefirefirefire...
Dark powers engulfed him until he was drowning in the flames. But these were his flames, or rather, these flames were himself; they couldn't harm him. These flames existed at the very core of his magical being, that core that had never quite burned itself through, that had come alive in dreams, and Parseltongue, and fire itself.
His core was burning now, but it didn't matter. When it came to fire inside him, Harry was in control. Fire battled fire as Harry fought off Malfoy's spells. He fought the intrusion into his core, forced it back, as images of Snape began to play inside his mind. Harsh images from the year before. Force me out, Potter. Force me out.
He hadn't known how to, not then, but he did now. He could push thought with thought; it wasn't much different to push fire with fire.
So Harry pushed, his consciousness bound up in the fight, his body straining with effort, his head coming up, blind eyes blazing with power, though the fight was purely mental.
A pulse of power cracked in half inside him, a shock wave so fierce he thought it would rip him apart as it tore through his muscles and blasted through his skin. He felt it ripple through the clearing much as it had rippled through the stones before, only this surge of magic was far more powerful. Screams shot out from every direction, the Death Eaters scattering, though Voldemort was still issuing curses. Even his voice though, sounded as though it were coming from farther away. Had he been flung back by the blast of magic?
Harry tried to fathom that, but the content of the curses caught his attention instead. Fire curses again, but these were literal, designed to set him ablaze from the outside in.
"Fuegarum diablare! Infierno!"
Smoke began to curl at his feet, heating his toes, filling his nostrils with its acrid scent.
And then, it seemed that everything happened all at once. Someone tall and hard was wrapping his arms completely around him, encircling the pillar, too, pressing the entire length of his body into soft robes that smelled vaguely of wormwood, and lavender, and oil of clove.
He knew who it was even before he heard the voice, or felt the sweep of hair close against his cheek. Hair he'd felt before, when Snape had cradled him in the hospital, or pulled him close to practice Occlumency.
Healing waters doused him again, the instant he was pulled into that embrace, and he heard his teacher's voice close against his ear, but warm, so warm. Not cold like Voldemort's. A rush of warmth to ply the waters in his soul through every limb, every aching bone.
"Hold tight, Harry."
That was all he said, just those three words, before something blazing hot was pushed against his shoulder, connecting with both Snape's finger and his own skin.
The familiar jerk behind his navel yanked him from the meeting site, yanked his hands free of the manacles, and sent him crashing down into a damp meadow that smelled strongly of clover. A robe was wrapped around him, and he was lifted, cradled firmly against Snape's warm chest, and carried forward. No merciful numbness, not now. Every step jarred his wounds, and Harry cried out softly, but then he was lowered to some sort of pallet, his limbs carefully arranged when he could not move them on his own.
He felt a hand come up to stroke his brow, though it stayed well clear of his eyes.
He heard a spell, felt a wand touching lightly here and there, fleeting like a feather. Was that a spell being incanted? A long spell... or maybe there were several, overlapping in his ears. He tried to make them out, but his head was full of cotton wool, and anyway, they didn't make sense. That didn't matter, though. He felt his belly fill with something warm and wet that washed across his veins, felt the pain tracing every nerve begin to fade.