The Lost Horcrux

Damage Limitations

He cast a look back at his slumbering wife, drank in the angelic vision of her naked, sex-exhausted body.

"I smashed that", he thought proudly, nodding to himself. He patted his flaccid cock to acknowledge a job well done, then began drawing a bath into the large copper tub in his Cell, unable to resist hitching a huge grin onto his ruined lips.

Harry turned to his ornate dresser unit as the water tinkled into the tub, ready to begin his usual morning cleaning routine, when an anxious thought suddenly caused him to pause a moment. Not having a door on the room made this a risk now, and he couldn't be bothered going back for his wand to cast a concealment spell. But this was something he didn't want Hermione to know about just yet. It wasn't a secret, as such ... he wasn't keeping things from his new wife, in his mind ... but this was a shame that he simply wasn't ready to share with her anytime soon.

Harry huffed out a breath, he would just have to chance it, hope she was too shagged out to wake up before she was fully rested. He opened his potion drawer and took out the seven vials he needed. Two of them were a sort of bubble bath, brewed from Lily's Phoenix Tears, and one was a powerful moisturiser, that helped smooth out the fresh scabs of his scar tissue and on his face. Harry added them to the splashing water, watching critically as his bath turned a pale sort of yellow hue with milky bubbles. It was the colour of urine, hardly alluring, but his deeply wounded bones and wrecked visage would be thankful for the healing properties later.

One potion was for pain-relief to be applied directly to his scar, and Harry hated it with a passion. Ron, Riddle ... either way around ... then this fucking despised, but essentially necessary potion. It went in that order in the bitter parts of Harry's mind. He found a fresh pippet in the drawer, and began pinging droplets of the potion over his face and into the hollow of his empty, dark-with-dried blood eye-socket, thrashing and hissing as each drop seared against his tender flesh. The pain was sheer enough to send a single tear trickling from his good eye.

The rest of the potion Harry sprinkled liberally onto one of his spare shawls, as he ground his jaw hard against the pain. The droplets on his skin continued to burn and sear like icy acid, and Harry lashed around, biting down hard on his tongue to keep in a hissing cry of senseless agony, waiting for the potion to kick in and totally numb the nerve-endings that it was seeping into. He drew blood with the ferocity of his biting, so intent was he on not waking Hermione from her much-needed rest.

As he waited to go numb, Harry turned and picked up the scarf, deciding that he might as well get it all over with in one go. He stared hard at the azure blue fabric with a steely resolution for a few seconds, took three deep, swift breaths for courage, and quickly buried his face into the shawl before he lost his nerve ...

... and Harry immediately felt like he had head-butted a wall of the severest, most burning agony imaginable ... and that his face was being irresistibly pinioned against it.

He was hit with, and fought vainly to absorb, another fresh wave of torture on the contact, and lurched back against the dresser, swearing angrily under his breath through gritted teeth. He turned his knuckles white, such was his death grip on the dresser's washbasin, as he tried to offset the excruciating torment that was his treatment. But soon, though not quite soon enough, his face became deadened and dull, the pain receded to a background ache, and he sucked in a rattling breath as his racing heartrate began to ease down to normal again.

Then he looked over quickly at his sleepy Hermione. She was still out for the count ... she hadn't seen or heard a thing, and Harry fully relaxed in his relief.

Three potions still remained. Two helped with his mental controls, calming and clarifying his mind. He felt pretty clear today, in all honesty, but he didn't want to take the risk of avoiding this part of his daily routine. This was a day he just had to be alert for. He knocked them back one after the other, like Jagerbomb shots, quite enjoying the taste ... which was cherry this time ... and said a quiet 'thank you' to Cassie. She was always making little flavour additions like this for him, to try and make his medicine a little more bearable.