This story was written for the Fifth Round of the Seventh Season of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm writing as Chaser 2 for The Tutshill Tornados.
Name of the round: In A Dimension Far, Far Away
The task of Chaser 2: (Mirror Dimension) Write about a story where good is evil and evil is good, or you could write about reverse characterizations. Think polar opposite from canon.
These are the prompts I'm using as a chaser to score some extra points:
1.[Word] Fire
4.[Emotion] Determination
15.[Color] Black
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the world J.K. Rowling has created. It's all hers, from Diagon Alley to Hogwarts to all the people living there.
Thanks to my spectacular team for betaing. A special thanks to Jaz and Hazuzu for coming up with the idea of a spell as the reason why good is evil and evil is good, and to Xanda for putting up with me asking her opinion on what felt like every other paragraph.
WARNING: some gruesome, but not explicit deaths
Rearranged Morals in the Light of Darkness
Words: 2 975
"Have you recovered it?" Voldemort stroked the smooth scales on Nagini's head, his blue fingernails catching lightly on their ridges. He watched the kneeling form of one of his loyal servants with forced impassivity.
Yaxley bent so low that his pale braid swept against the polished flagstones of the ballroom at Malfoy Manor. "Yes, my lord. It wasn't easy. Several men paid the blood price for it, but I have it."
"Show it to me."
Yaxley crawled to his feet, remaining deeply bowed, and pulled a parcel from inside his sable cloak. He held it out in supplication, and at Voldemort's small wave, he pulled at the string holding it closed. The oilcloth fell open to reveal fire. The acrid odour of gunpowder spread quickly on a heated wind until it filled the entire hall. In Yaxley's palm rested a smouldering stone encapsulated in flickering flames. "The fossilised heart of an ifrit, my lord."
Voldemort accepted the heart, holding it delicately in a clawed hand. "I am pleased. You will be amply rewarded for your service. You may take your leave."
"Thank you, my lord."
The Ministry of Magic had fallen beneath his might and magical Britain was his. Allies were easy to recruit through openly orating their beliefs or through indiscriminate use of force. However, there were those who had not yet been brought to heel and who, through none of the means yet applied, would be brought into the fold. They were the best the Order of the Phoenix had to offer, and they remained obnoxiously loyal to Dumbledore's naive belief in the power of love and the equality of all men, be they Muggle pests, Mudblood scum, or beasts. Through guile, resourcefulness, and skill, they were undermining his operations and escaping capture, serving the light by staying hidden in the dark.
It was a shame to kill them, a shame to rid the world of such capable, if misguided, witches and wizards, and so, Voldemort had toiled untiringly to discover a solution to the conundrum, to devise a way in which the magical blood could be preserved and persuaded to serve a nobler cause. In time, he'd devised a spell, a ritual most delicate, to change their alignment, the very foundation of their characters. Once he completed it, they would no longer oppose him. They would know in their hearts that he had always been right.
He had sent his loyal Death Eaters far and wide to collect the rare components required in the ritual. It was a time-consuming endeavour of much-required patience. Lord Voldemort had the resolution necessary to see it through. Flesh, blood, and bone. Life, magic, and soul. He would give all to assure the ultimate victory.
The ifrit heart was the penultimate ingredient. Only one component remained: the blood of a Lethifold. Many months after their respective departures, the expeditions sent to Africa and the Amazonas had not returned. Neither would the members of the third expedition, who had gone to the jungles of Borneo, ever return to their families. Voldemort had grown impatient, and his mood had blackened, so when they had dared to come before him empty-handed, they paid the final price any man can pay. He was done suffering failures. He was also done waiting.
Lethifolds are related to Dementors, and their blood would suffice in the ritual. He needed no help to retrieve it. In the dark of night, as a December storm raged the North Sea, he flew across the black waves to Azkaban and spared no mercy in taking what he needed from the prison wardens. Finally, he was ready to perform the ritual.
At noon on the shortest day of the year, Voldemort performed great magic. The ancient fire of the ifrit heart mingled with the fresh shadowy blood of a Dementor, as well as with the armoured roots of a white mountain oak and the gleaming eyes of a nix and many more ingredients harvested from other dark creatures. A few drops of his own blood and swathes of magic channelled through the knotted wood of the Elder Wand completed it.
A shockwave exploded out from Malfoy Manor. It spread evenly across the country, swept across fields, forests, cities, and mountains, rumbled across shores and cliffs, flowing out over the seas and racing away from the frozen coasts of the British Isles. In its wake, people were changed. The ones who wanted to do good onto their fellow-men turned selfish, and their hearts shrivelled with malice. The ones who lived their lives evenly, doing neither well nor ill were scarcely impacted by the magic. The ones who had hurt, injured, and left pain in their wake found themselves bewildered, a new weight placed in their chests, and a new longing set to guide their steps.
So was also the reality for Voldemort. He was on his knees, not because the magic had taken its toll on him, but because a latticework of obligations and unspoken rules tied him down, guilt a millstone of unfathomable weight. He reeled at how changed the world seemed. The words he'd lived by, there is no good or evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it, rang hollow. They were the words of someone who cared only about himself, someone who didn't care that all life was precious, that each pair of eyes are the windows to the soul of someone with a rich emotional life of desires, fears, and untapped potential. He was no longer that person. He cared, and it crippled him.
He had always understood that other people were as full of thoughts and desires as he was, texts and interactions provided the evidence, but looking at them and feeling their pain or their joy was as foreign to him as fire was to a kelpie. If he could not experience it, its validity was questionable, and his own fears were ever more pressing. They were a blazing sun where the concerns of other people were dim pinpricks too small to be noticed. No longer did his own self fill the horizon from east to west. The sky had blackened, allowing other stars to shine brightly next to his. The lessons he should have learned as a child sunk in at long last. Other people mattered too, and he had wronged them.
The frosted grass of the manor grounds crunched under hesitant boots. "My lord?" Bellatrix Lestrange's voice was near unrecognisable. It was soft as newly fallen snow, gentle as a flower petal, and filled with kindness it had never before known.
"Yes, Bella?"
"Do you require assistance? Something went wrong with the ritual, didn't it? I feel different. All of us do."
He pushed to his feet, hand clenched tightly around his wand. "How are you here already? You must have been near. Did I not explicitly order everyone to keep their distance?"
"My lord." She lowered her eyes.
"You could have been hurt." That was not the reason he'd issued the order. He'd been concerned with interruptions, with imbecile Death Eaters disrupting the ritual. The danger had been far from his mind then. Now it was at the forefront of his thoughts.
"I was worried about you."
Anger swelled inside him. He latched on to it, revelled in its familiarity. He filled himself up with the scorching heat of it, encouraged his shortened breath and the thundering of his heart. She'd questioned him. She'd disobeyed him. That she dared!
Incantations of curses flashed through his mind, spells to make her writhe in pain, to make her cry out, and to force pleas across her lips, but no magic leapt from his wand. The images of Bellatrix in anguish that accompanied the curses made the portcullises of his mind slam shut, abruptly stopping the action of spellcasting before it could even start. The punishment did not fit the crime.
He tucked his wand inside his sleeve. He could not whip up his anger into his usual frenzy of rage. The situation did not merit it. The emotion simmered steadily, an overlay of disappointment rising to the surface. Disappointment in her.
And in himself.
"Bellatrix," he said. "You remain my most faithful servant, do you not?"
"Forever, my lord." The feverish look of worship in her black eyes was the same as always.
"Lord Voldemort commands you to leave. Go forth and discover what has been wrought. I sense the workings of my spell, and it's unintended effects on us. Seek out our enemies. See if they have changed as we have."
She smiled, too large and too unsettling to be called beautiful, but it was radiant after its own peculiar fashion. "As you say, so shall it be done." She strode off across the lawns, heading towards the intricate iron gate that marked the exit of the grounds and of the Anti-Apparition wards.
Left with the silence and the dim solstice sun, Voldemort circled the ritual area, his robes whispering against the grass. The ground was scorched by firey magic, the pattern making out the rune Dagaz: two triangles with their tips facing together. An hourglass, the uncultured might call it. It was a rune of change, of transfiguration. In the centre of one of the triangles remained a pool of shadowy liquid. Made of absolute darkness that floated lazily above the frozen soil, it reflected no light. The Dementor blood. It had not been accepted by the magic of the ritual.
He had known that Lethifold blood was required. He had calculated the balance of dark and light magic, of magic connected to the elements, and the magic of the earthly versus the spiritual. He'd counted it precisely, leaving no margin for substitutes. Yet, he had ignored his own wisdom and had given in to impatience and the base need for haste. He'd let his desires rule him and had chosen a path that might expedite his moment of triumph. He had been left with a ritual void of the required darkness, and so the result, while still in question, indicated a change in himself and his followers. Perhaps some of the darkness that had been lacking had been drawn from them. Additionally, the light of the intended targets might have been funnelled into them as there was not enough darkness to cancel it out.
Committing the state of the ritual site to memory, he returned indoors. He had more followers to tend to and research to start.
In the evening, all his loyal Death Eaters gathered at Malfoy Manor. He'd sent several people, aside from Bellatrix, to gather intelligence. Where previous assemblies had been tense and commenced with many traded insults and well-placed hexes, the greetings now exchanged were wishes for a pleasant night and inquiries about the health of family and friends. Wry smirks were nowhere to be seen. Instead the faces of the crowd were painted with true smiles, smiles that etched crow's feet at the corner of the eyes. Many of those eyes were red-rimmed, and many a gaze flickered wildly. Their sorrow, following the great change, was palpable.
Bellatrix pranced through the hall, making a show of kneeling before Lord Voldemort, claiming the right to be the first one to report and forcing the start of the meeting proper.
"I have news, my ord."
A hush fell over the hall.
"Speak, Bellatrix. What have you seen?"
"It is the same everywhere, my lord, at the Ministry, in Diagon Alley, and at Hogwarts. People I know who are on our side cannot make themselves do their duties. Their consciences are stopping them. Grown men hide in their beds, crying like ickle babies, scared by the things they have done in your name. The people who oppose us are changed too. The Healers of Saint Mungo's don't care for the comfort of their wards, will not give out the needed the pain relief potions, and I heard mutterings about the permanent residents being drains upon the hospital. I went to see the Longbottoms, and—" Her voice broke.
She looked up, her eyes shiny with unshed tears, but her expression was angry, her eyebrows stooped into low, flat lines. "I stopped the Healers from committing what they dubbed a mercy killing. They would have been killed. Defenceless little lambs. And it would have been my fault." She hiccupped, the prelude to a sob.
He recognized the trials and tribulations she'd gone through, the horror she had encountered in facing the sins of her past. "You did well, Bellatrix. You may go find your rest. Narcissa, see to your sister." Narcissa Malfoy gathered Bellatrix in her arms and discreetly lead her from the hall, Rodolphus Lestrange following close behind.
"Yaxley, what do you say about the state of the good Ministry?"
"It's ours. The people who work there are mostly concerned with their own skins. They're cowards who've never had great empathy or morals. They've changed little. The Aurors were ours before and remain ours. We'll be able to hold it."
Voldemort nodded.
"Any word on the Order of the Phoenix?"
The hall rang with silence.
"No one?" His voice was dangerously soft. He scanned the faces of his Death Eaters, searching for someone to single out, someone to take the blame, someone to punish. He found them pained and cowering. Some grasped at their Dark Marks where his displeasure was communicated. It was unjust. Words could and would serve that purpose. To relive them, he pushed down his anger, rationalising their failure with some difficulty.
"Very well," he said. "You are excused for this inadequacy. It has been a trying day for us all, but do not disappoint me again. We must know the state of the Order. What are their thoughts? What are their plans?"
He rose. "My friends, we stand before a challenge none of us had ever thought to prepare for. We are weakened now that our eyes are open to the pain of all living things, and our enemies have had theirs shut. I urge you to remain calm. There is no magic that cannot be undone. I shall put the world to rights.
"The threat of the Order of the Phoenix will soon be but a memory, and we shall all be able to rest easy. Until then, I count on you to keep the peace.
"Adapt to the changes that have come over you, train to be as effective with your new restrictions as you were when the death of others meant nothing, prepare to once more set out to gather rare reagents. The day will soon come when I will call upon you to assist me in saving the world. Rest well tonight, for come morning there is work to be done."
And work, they did. Lord Voldemort spiralled into his research, at first thinking he should devise a reversal, and then, pondering the consequences, changed his direction. He could not reverse it completely. That would mean returning to what had been. Two sides fighting. One side unafraid of causing hurt and destruction. He must find a way to restore the people he had aimed to change, while he and his retained their newly gained morality. It infinitely complicated the magic.
As he researched, the outside world stirred, and it didn't take long for it to come for him. He was stirred from his studies by shouts and explosions. Wand in hand, he took to the halls of Malfoy Manor. The Order of the Phoenix was there, the poisonous green of the Killing Curse refracted through the crystal and gleamed off the gilded arms of the many chandeliers. Voldemort took up the fight. At every step, he fought not only the Order but also fought himself, battling his instincts. He must incapacitate, not injure, not kill. His changed nature would not allow it. And his opponents were not the ones he'd grown used to fighting. Shielding against their curses with counterspells was impossible when they relied so heavily on the Unforgivable and other dark spells. Instead he called the environment to his defence, tearing apart the stone walls to create blocks, and always kept on the move.
The Fiendfyre raced down one of the corridors, thundering Thestrals, dreadful dragons, and murderous manticores making up the horde. In taking control of it, and stopping its rampage, he left his back open.
"No!"
Bellatrix dove, taking the curse that was meant for Lord Voldemort. A whooshing sound and a flash of green robbed her of her light.
Voldemort let go of the Fiendfyre, unthinking and enraged he attacked, sparing no mercy. The one who had dared strike her down met his demise. Other witches and wizards likewise perished at the end of his wand. He pushed forward, with the roaring flames at his back, striking down Shacklebolt, two Weasleys, and the young Auror Tonks, until there were no more living opponents left, only the blaze of the magical fire pushing him into a corner.
He tried to take control of it, but it had grown too large, too ferocious. The entire manor was engulfed, had been usurped into its domain. Screaming and burning, Voldemort was expelled from his earthly body.
Less than a spirit, smaller than the weakest of ghosts, he remained, tied to the plane of the living by his Horcruxes, and he found himself afraid. Through the ritual, he'd come to detest the means by which he'd sought immortality. He could not again ask anyone to assist him in regaining a body.
For months he drifted, in pain, in a world coloured in shades of black, until one by one his Horcruxes were destroyed. With all of them unmade, his soul winked out, and with it, the magic of the ritual dissolved, restoring people to whom they were supposed to be, but leaving the world forever changed.
The End
A/N 16th June 2019:
Hi there! Hope you enjoyed this story. I really liked the prompt I got, but it was still difficult to use well, I think. Please let me know what you think of how it turned out.
Some explanations:
-An ifrit is a djinn-like mythological being of the Middle East, associated with fire and hell.
-Dagaz looks something like this II