The Lost Horcrux

A Darkling Plain

Disclaimers: Dark themes, police state ideas, mention of spousal abuse on and off-screen, death of minor characters, graphic imagery and violence, frank sex discussion, copious bad language, bashing the fucking Weasleys and Dumbledore, liberties taken with mythical history.

***

Harry felt like he was drowning, like death was only a second away ... and then, quite suddenly, he started to feel again.

His throat was filled with something viscous, gelatinous ... it was blocking the airways of a throat already swollen virtually shut. He coughed and slapped the back of his neck, but the restriction wouldn't budge. He wondered in panic what would happen to all his love, all his dreams, if he fell down and died here? He didn't want to lose any of them ... but he couldn't breathe, couldn't get enough air through to his damaged lungs. His throat hurt so much, like he'd received a lancing blow to the trachea.

He just couldn't remember how he got here.

Harry wasn't even sure where here was. He blinked and looked around. He was cold ... so very, very cold ... he knew that much. There was a blackness in his veins, pushing through him like frozen fire. It was icy, sharp ... he shivered as it flowed underneath his thin skin. For he felt thin, stretched somehow ... as if his body had forgotten how to hold in heat. He tried to hug into himself for warmth, but there was none to be had. The cold pressed tighter on his lungs, heavy and leaden, as he spluttered for that breath that refused to come.

There was a flash of light to Harry's left, and with it came a dash of warmth and cogency ... and Harry began to understand where he was. Not that this new knowledge was welcome. How in the hell had he gotten himself here? He closed his eye and tried hard to remember ... he'd been in the Ritual Chamber, then there was a lot of pain and then ...

"Enola! You did this! You sent me here!"

Harry fronted up to that vortex of light, as it swirled and dimmed and formed itself into the familiar shape of Neville's wife. She strode purposefully over to him and took in their surroundings.

"I didn't send you here, Harry," Enola disagreed. "I don't even know where here is! What is this place, I don't recognise it?"

Harry looked around again, realisation flooding him now that he was enveloped by Enola's strength. "This is my mindscape, or at least, the transit point at the very top of it."

"A transit point?" Enola queried. "We didn't create anything like this, Harry. What even is it?"

"The more my mind has been able to heal, the more my subconscious has begun to assert itself again," Harry explained, flicking his eye around curiously. "The lower levels of my mind were so damaged I didn't want a subconscious, for the longest time. But your help has encouraged its regrowth. And this is the result."

"So where are we?"

"Think of it as a reception area," Harry replied. "My mind is now beginning to reach a level of strength and sophistication where it recognises the need to protect me again. This is a sort of sentry station ... guarding the entrance to them."

Harry nodded to a point over Enola's shoulder, and she turned to look at it. There, stood stark against the milky whiteness elsewhere, seven dark tunnels loomed ominous and foreboding. Enola shuddered as she remembered the horrors lurking along each one.

"Your plains? Under a sort of control now?

Harry sighed and closed his eye. "Yeah. All of them, exactly how I visualise the way to reach them now. What I cant understand, though, is what I'm doing here in the first place."