A/N: This is as far as I've gotten writing wise. I've regained a bit of inspiration since going over this and posting, but updates will be sporadic at best, with long waits in-between. I dearly appreciate all your reviews, and they have definitely helped bump my muse into gear. If anyone has any helpful opinions or constructive criticism, please don't hold back! I never meant to get serious about this fic, but it happened anyway, and I would love to hear what you would all like to see, and will do my best to fit it in as the plot allows. I think I have a plot... kind of. An idea of one. I'm also thinking of shifting the time-line to the Quest era, though I don't forsee Harry becoming a tenth-walker. Thoughts?

I'm playing around a bit with writing styles, so if that's jarring, sorry in advance! This is the first time I've posted anything in like five years, so it's not gonna be perfect!

Warning: This chapter deals with depression, and hints at dissociation. If that bothers anyone, I'm sorry; I was kind of in a dark place when I wrote this, and I didn't even realize how dreary the whole thing was till I read it over again. Things will get lighter, don't worry, and Harry will continue to be a careless asshole soon enough.

And I probably should have said this earlier, but I anticipate no slash/romance in this story whatsoever. Harry's gonna be a little shitty, emotionally constipated brat, and while the emotionally constipated part may change with the right help, he's still gonna be a shitty brat. Who's like, 12, but 17 on the inside. So all relationships will be platonic, but read into whatever you like, I won't be offended.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but this weird humidifier that is brand new but still doesn't work, God knows why.

Chapter 5

It had been awhile since he'd slept in the outdoors, and even then they'd had a tent. Harry rolled his shoulder, ruefully marveling at his companions' apparent lack of discomfort.

The most interesting part about the whole sleeping-out-of-doors business had been the sleeping with people part. Harry was used to nightmares; he'd been having them off and on since - well, the first time someone had tried to kill him. When he was eleven.

Harry was used to nightmares.

(-the Veil was calling, beckoning him in the voice of the man he'd loved, who'd represented hope and freedom and home and all the things he'd always wanted but never been able, never been allowed, to have, and he wanted, how he wanted, and a sickening voice was intoning, Kill the spare, and he was fighting and clawing at his restraints but he couldn't fight, couldn't move, and Ginny was lying cold and still and dead on the ground, and that voice was speaking again, and someone was screaming, mother, father, and the green light overwhelmed his vision, and he was helpless and frozen and he couldn't move-)

What he wasn't so used to (anymore) was having people around for those nightmares.

Without the use of his wand to cast a silencing spell, Harry had had the dubious pleasure of a long night spent being shaken awake, having to mumble out his 'I'm fine, I'm fines' while half asleep, sleeping again, getting woken up again, and rinse and repeat. The elves had been very kind about it, but waking up to bothersome (if careful) questions about his dreams and a lot of suffocating attention? He... hadn't enjoyed that (he hadn't). That he could have done without.

He'd probably managed to catch a good four hours, all told, but he still somehow felt that he hadn't rested at all.

It didn't help that they'd cleaned up camp at horrible-o'clock, much to Harry's consternation, and he'd been shuffled onto a horse after a quick breakfast, still yawning and barely awake.

They'd set off quickly after that, and Harry had been forced to try to mentally readjust and compartmentalize while being jostled on a horse. If the fine tremors in his hands were any indication, he hadn't entirely succeeded.

Stretching as best he could while on a moving animal, Harry yawned off the last of his residual sleepiness and nightmare-induced terror, and resigned himself to another repetitive day.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case for long; within a few hours of riding, the terrain began to slowly change. They'd passed through the forest off and on during their journey, but grass was now giving way to dirt and stone, trees to rocky outcroppings, and the smooth dirt path to a winding, steep slope. Harry guessed they were heading up the mountain, and was proven correct when the road went higher, narrowing even further. He was fine initially, but once they reached a height where the slightest misstep could lead to long, long fall…

The top of the Astronomy tower? Fine. He could control how close he got to the edge, and most importantly, there were walls. Top of the Quiddich stands? Also fine. There were enough people surrounding him to cushion the impact if the stands were to, say, crumble from a well-shot Bombarda (was he paranoid? Please). His broom? Not even a question. His broom was like an extension of his body; he knew, without a second of doubt, that the moment he sat on his broom, he had perfect control of every inch of it.

Now a horse - a tall, tall horse - which he was not controlling, on a winding mountain path...?

Harry spent a good few hours sitting rigidly straight while steadily sweating out everything he'd drunk in the past couple of days, and had to fight off increasingly amused (and concerned) questions about his welfare.

Bloody mountains. Merlin-be-damned horses.

Their path grew even more treacherous with every hour that passed. The winding path took them over and down rocky terrain, at times on thin ledges so narrow and with such steep drops Harry had to close his eyes to keep from fainting and/or throwing up. After hours of tense, panic-induced nausea, Harry finally managed to enter something like a forced state of calm, or numbess.

(-it was like a fog settling over his mind, blanking out the terror, softening the sharp edges, the sight of a crumbling foot-bridge over a fifty-foot drop no more than slightly unnerving, and he couldn't seem to feel much, but that was fine, he'd already felt so much his entire life, it couldn't hurt to feel a little less-)

The feeling was odd but welcome, and Harry couldn't be bothered to do much of anything at the moment, anyway. He finally felt able to stop clenching so hard on the saddle, and it was close enough to what little he'd managed to retain from his disastrous Occlumency lessons that he wasn't worried. Maybe the stress had brought his secret talent to the fore?

The next forty minutes or so of heart-stopping terror were pleasantly numbed, and Harry was able to look around at the admittedly spectacular view, even if his eerie calm kept him from feeling too much enjoyment. It was a definite improvement over the past few hours, and Harry was able to thoughtfully consider where his new fear of heights could have originated whilst staring at herd of deer down far, far below them.

"Once we reach the Ford of Bruinen, Harri, you will be able to catch a first glimpse of our home. We have a good half-day left of riding till then, but I assure you, it is well worth the wait," the voice of Elrohir, his current companion for the day, broke through the fog awhile later.

Harry startled into awareness, and hmm'd noncommittally. As exciting as it would be to finally get off this bleeding horse and off the freaking mountain, it was hard to be too enthused. The reminder of how close they were to their destination brought back a lot of the thoughts and worries he'd been putting off; they demanded to be acknowledged before they arrived at their destination, before time ran out and he lost his chance.

Elrohir started explaining the history of the surrounding mountains and their relation to the history of 'Imladris', their home and apparently a sanctuary of some sort, and he nodded in all the right places (even as he shifted carefully in the saddle and to the left of the gigantic canyon running along their path). It was interesting and definitely important information, and he tried to pay Elrohir the attention the elf deserved; but as time passed, Harry gradually felt his awareness fade again as he drifted into his thoughts.

He'd put off thinking about unpleasant things for as long as he could, but it seemed like he no longer had that luxury.

He put his thoughts into order, and started with the most pressing issue: interrogation.

What did their definition of 'interrogation' entail, exactly? Sure these two had reacted relatively well considering his total lack of a proper explanation for his presence, but this 'father' of theirs was an unknown entity. Interrogation could mean a lot of things, some of which Harry had experienced first hand and definitely never wanted to experience again. That was a legitimate worry, and Harry marked that down as the first thing to subtly question his captors about.

And if they knew what magic was but had no idea what the Ministry of Magic was and he went and told them, would that be considered breaking the Statute of Secrecy? Considering their reactions to his presence so far, they likely only had the barest of experience with magic users, and at a guess, those wizards were primitive and lacking any sort of Ministry or Government (seriously, where on earth was this place?). He wasn't in the mood to break the law, but could he argue extenuating circumstances? He had a bit more leeway before he had to come to a decision about that, so he moved on to the next.

Should he be upfront about his role in Voldemort's mur-execution? For all they didn't seem aware of the details of the War, surely they'd heard something - enough, at least, to recognize that he was their ally. And he needed them to recognize him as an ally. He didn't want to relive any of those memories over again if he could help it, but surely it would help him believe that he was firmly on the side of the Light, and that he no intention of hurting them.

Which reminded Harry: the age thing.

Some of Harry's calm faded at the thought, leaving him in another cold sweat as they passed frightfully close to the edge of the path.

The age thing. Really, what should he do? For all that he hadn't cared too much about the changes to his body initially, Harry was definitely seeing the downsides to this body now. Could he even prove his true age if there was nothing to compare his knowledge to? He could show off every one of his high-powered spells, but all that would prove was his intelligence; they might even label him a prodigy, which on top of being untrue would be terribly annoying. And he didn't know enough of these 'Istari' the elves spoke of. Maybe they all looked as young as he did and were just as powerful - or were they old, decrepit sages barely hanging on to their existence? There was no way of knowing, and the last thing Harry needed was to be labeled a liar, or worse, crazy.
Was he willing to go to the opposite extreme, then, to lie and pass himself off as an only slightly-above-average eleven or twelve-year-old? How long would he be able to stand being condescended to and treated like the child he really wasn't? Was it worth the possible benefits of being thought of as harmless?

In the end, all that would be a moot point if they decided he was a spy (no matter what the brothers said), and that was a frightening possibility - a possible future he couldn't hope to predict with his lack of knowledge of these elves and their rules and customs.

And if help didn't come quick enough...

If help... didn't come...

"…think so, Harri?"

Still caught up in his thoughts, Harry automatically agreed, "Yeah, makes sense."

He felt the body at his back sigh, which was all the warning he got before fingers mercilessly attacked his ribs. Shrieking in surprise, his previous calm flew out the window as Harry flailed and struggled for balance for a heart-stopping moment. When he finally managed to get a death grip on what he could reach (in this case, The horse's mane, which the mare did not appreciate), he turned his head and shouted furiously: "The bloody hell was that for? You trying to kill me or something?"

Unmoved, Elrohir said, "I asked you, little Istari, where your opinion stood on the matter of purple, flying goats laying their eggs in the shadows of the Misty Mountains."

Harry felt his cheeks warm. "Um. Oh."

"'Oh' indeed," Elrohir agreed. "If my telling of the history of Imladris is so very uninteresting to you, I would prefer that you tell me so, as opposed to letting me continue to speak when you have long since ceased paying attention."

The look the elf gave him was somehow both amused and disapproving at the same time. Feeling himself flush even further, Harry dropped his eyes and turned, hunching his shoulders as he mumbled a vague apology.

That was stupid of him. If Mad-eye were here, he'd be running laps to the sound of a horrendous lecture on the many terrible deaths aurors had met on account of inattention. He knew better. He really, really knew better.

He'd had a lot of these 'little slips' since coming to this place, and while individually they were nothing too concerning, when put together…

Harry shuddered and bravely removed one hand from its tight hold so he could massage a blossoming headache. Something was really, really off. It had something to do with this new body, or this place, or something in the spell, ritual, whatever that had brought him here, and he really needed to find out what that was before he did something really, really stupid, with lasting consequences.

Just another freaking thing to figure out on top of everything else. What a headache, Harry thought, even as he rubbed harder at his actual headache.

He heard more than felt the sigh this time, and a hand gently patted his head.

(He wanted to be annoyed, but in the past day and a half of travel he'd gotten used to these elves and their casual attitude towards physical contact. Apparently it wasn't weird at all to pat your potential enemy on the head, or give them side-ways hugs, or pick them up like they're a sack of potatoes. While he was still having trouble fighting the urge to flinch away from every innocent touch, he was getting better at hiding his surprise and discomfort. He mentally marked the whole thing down as another peculiarity of the elves, and tucked his feelings on the matter away)

With a hand still on his head, Elrohir said: "I am aware that as your captors we are hard to trust, little one. Therefore, although we have already spoken of this once before, I will say it again, as many times as you require: No harm shall befall you while you are in our care. No matter your history or your purpose, our Father is fair and merciful and kind, and will judge you accordingly. You have not attacked us, though you have had plenty of opportunity; you have cooperated, after a fashion-" this was said teasingly, and Harry felt himself smile slightly against his will, "-and nothing you have said or done has lead either of us to be wary of you. This has earned you our favor, and I urge you to take that to heart, and cease this heavy contemplation that leads you to hunch in on yourself so, as if you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders."

The warm concern thick in Elrohir's voice had a confusing effect on Harry: he could feel a lump building in his throat, and a weird sort of tightness in his eyes.

This stupid body, Harry thought, feeling a flash of sudden anger, which thankfully cleared away the strange symptoms. He ducked his head to remove the elf's hand.

This stupid everything. He was so tired of this.

All he'd wanted was a nice drink to celebrate a birthday everyone remembered but didn't actually care about. All he'd wanted was a bit of break from the monotony, the day-to-day drudgery of going to work, signing mind-numbing piles of documents, dodging fans, and going home to his one-room apartment with its singular, dying plant and second-hand furniture.

All he'd wanted was a break, a rest. But this?

Harry stared down at his tiny hands, at the saddle he could barely stand to sit in, at the horse he'd never wanted to ride.

(-the calm was shifting into something like numbness, only different, stronger, deeper, overwhelming, an inexplicable feeling like moving through water, every movement ten times harder, hard to shift his hands, lift his head, and a strange feeling of disconnect, like this body was not his own, which it wasn't, it wasn't his own, was it, not now, not then, hadn't been for years-)

All he'd ever wanted was a break. It seemed like almost every time he managed to be happy, something would happen to fuck it all up, and him too, by extension. Every time he managed to bottle it up and move on like the hero they all expected and needed, something else would come along and the whole process would begin all over again.

(-he was disconnected, but the heavy thoughts were piling over each other like a pack of rabid dogs, screaming out of the corner he'd hid them in, trying to get out, trying to overwhelm him again with the memories, the emotions, the dark things, the things he hated and had no need of, the things he'd cut out just to stay sane and alive-)

He was tired of being fucked over, tired of being manipulated, tired of drowning under the crushing expectations he was always fighting (and almost always failing) to meet. Luck could only take you so far, and… and he was just so. Tired.

They had stopped moving, Harry noticed suddenly. He looked up, and saw Elladan getting down from his horse in front of them. There were hands at his waist a second later, and he found himself hoisted onto the ground before he do more than recall that he'd never answered Elrohir back.

"We have enough daylight left to reach the Bruinen by nightfall. Let us rest, as we have no pressing need to hurry," Elladan said.

Then the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and he was being guided to a low outcropping of rock before he could think to protest.

"Sit," Elrohir said firmly. "Rest."

He sat. The world was a murky and cold, blank and strangely empty, and he barely cared about the water he was urged to drink, or the dried meat and berries pressed into his hand. He couldn't feel the concern from his captors as they watched him stare blankly at the food, barely swallow the water, and sit in a silent daze.

All he could feel was the weight of a thousand dark thoughts bearing down on his shoulders, the little strength he had left to hold himself up slipping through his fingers like sand.

This time, when they started moving again, they kept an even, comfortable pace that Harry wasn't aware enough to notice, never mind appreciate.

They'd switched again, Elladan as his new companion to keep from over-tiring the horses. Elrohir took the lead, and for a while Harry watched, heavy and numb, as the sun slowly slipped behind the mountains, leaving the sky a gentle orange with swirls of pink and magenta.

Hours might have passed, maybe minutes, seconds, but Harry didn't care, and couldn't even remember how to, or why he might need to. The world was slow and empty and cold, and it was all he could do to remember to keep breathing.

(At some points he couldn't even remember why that last might be important at all)

But then: a hand on his back, sending tendrils of heat down his spine; at the junction between neck and shoulder, a thumb rubbing light circles of warmth into his skin; a hand lightly gripped his cold fingers, carefully stopping the minute trembling that had re-emerged without Harry's notice; and fingers, running playfully through his wild hair, untangling knots so gently he couldn't even feel the tugging.

He relaxed so slowly and gradually that he didn't even notice, until sensation and coherent thought returned, bringing with them the unpleasant bite of the rapidly cooling air, a sharp clarity of thought and a renewed awareness of his surroundings. The weight on his shoulders hadn't faded, but it felt lighter somehow, easier to bear, easier to carry for another day.

Harry realized that the sound he'd been dully ignoring was singing. He couldn't understand it, as it was in the language the two elves spoke amongst themselves, but it was beautiful and peaceful all the same. With that realization, Harry became truly aware of how much he'd separated himself from his surroundings, and what the elves had been slowly and kindly doing to bring him back.

It was a humiliatingly foolish thing to have done, so closely on the heels of his last loss of attention, but all Harry could feel was gratitude for these two brothers - these two wonderful, beautiful creatures - who had done what to them may have been a simple, thoughtless act, but for him meant more than he could ever put to words.

Feeling unaccountably shy, Harry reached carefully for the hand holding the reins and squeezed, trying his best to let the action speak for the words he couldn't say. The hand playing with his hair gave a soft, soothing stroke, and Harry let the unspoken acknowledgment settle the last of his unease.

They rode on in the approaching twilight, the sounds of singing gently carrying in the air.