Black and White
By Kenaz Astaroth
Rating: R, for graphic calculated torture, dark themes, and disillusionment.
Warnings: graphic torture and abuse. Probably should not read if you are faint of heart. AU-ness without the story actually being an AU. Torture. Character death. Possibility of Slash (There may or may not be a romance subplot of some sort in this fic. I'm just leaving the possibility open, and seeing as how it's me, if there is any romance then it will be slashy romance.) General mangling of JK Rowling's universe. unbetaed
Summary: Sometimes, things really are black and white, just not in the way you think. You know what the wizarding world is like, right? Voldemort is evil, Dumbledore is good, Death Eaters are evil, Snape is a spy for the Light, the Order of the Phoenix is good, Dark magic is evil, Light magic is good. All very clear cut, yes? What if I told you that you're wrong? What if I told you, that everything, absolutely everything, that you knew about the wizarding world was wrong?
Disclaimer: Anything and Everything that you recognise from JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series is not mine. It is hers, obviously. However, everything else is mine (or if it is someone else's, I am not consciously plagiarising or imitating).
Author's Notes: This story is completely spur-of-the-moment. It has no defined plot-line (though I do have a general idea), has not been betaed (though I did proofread a few times), and I haven't actually decided whether or not I want to make it into a full-time project when I already have several others with that particular designation. So please, forgive me if it is a little rough.
Chapter 1
In Dreams, part one
"Let me show you," pleaded Tom urgently. "You need to know! The whole fate of the wizarding world might depend on you knowing."
"I'm not that important," said Harry insistently, "and why should I trust you?"
Tom closed his eyes. Dear Merlin, the boy was already so far gone in their lies. He prayed to any deity willing to listen that he wasn't too late to show the boy the truth, too late to stop Harry from becoming like them.
"Please, Harry," said Tom softly. "This is a true dream, nothing more. Nothing can harm you here. It is like a muggle telephone, only you can see and touch me as well as hear me."
"So this invasion of my dreams is just a method of communication," said Harry doubtfully. Tom nodded. "Alright then, show me," said Harry, hoping that this wouldn't be a repeat performance of what had happened the last time Tom had shown him something.
"Grab my hand," Tom held out his hand to Harry. Harry hesitated for a moment, then clasped the hand with his own. There was a sharp tug behind his navel and he was strongly reminded of travel by portkey. When they landed, he found himself at Hogwarts.
Harry turned to Tom, frowning in confusion, "What are we doing here?" This was summer hols before his sixth year. After the fiasco last year he had not been looking forward to coming back.
"Where?" asked Tom carefully. "Where are we?"
Harry blinked in complete bewilderment, "We're at Hogwarts, of course."
Tom looked out over the dilapidated castle, which literally lay in ruins, and shook his head sadly. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry?"
Harry nodded, rather relieved that Tom had figured it out.
"Harry…"
Harry looked at Tom, "Yes?"
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry closed in 1439. It never reopened."
Harry's eyes widened in shock. "What are you-" he began, but then there was a bright flash of light, and Harry found himself back in his bedroom, awake.
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The next night, Tom returned.
"Hello, Harry." Harry studied him intently.
"There's more, isn't there?" asked Harry softly. Tom nodded solemnly, obviously relieved that Harry was accepting his story.
"Show me," said Harry simply. Tom nodded, and once more they found themselves at Hogwarts. Or, the castle, which appeared to Harry's eyes in perfect repair and well-trimmed lawns. Tom saw the real building, behind the hundreds of faultless illusions. The grounds were overgrown, the lake looked like very little would be able to survive inside, since it was covered from shore to shore with green algae. The building itself was in horrible shape, and Tom watched, emotionless, as a tower crumbled and fell to the ground in a cloud of dust before his eyes.
"Here," said Tom, pulling a wand from the air. This was a dreamscape, and he was utterly in control of his surroundings. If he wanted to pull a wand out of the air, he could. "This is a charm that will let you see past the illusions, and to what this place really looks like," he muttered a charm and Harry's eyes widened in horror as he surveyed the ruins.
Harry frowned, "How are we, the students I mean, able to walk around and attend classes if the building is like this?"
"It's a test of your magic," replied Tom. "Some people's magic can't compensate for the physical limitations of the illusion charms. Oftentimes they end up being crushed by rubble, or fall from a large height. Others, like Neville Longbottom, have trouble performing conscious magic when their subconscious is already manipulating their magic in such a strenuous manner. The illusions," Tom explained, "only have an effect on your eyes. The test is whether or not your own magic compensates for the rest of your senses."
Harry glared at him, "I think I would notice if students disappeared. I'm not that stupid."
Tom shrugged, "Of course you would. The students who die are sometimes replaced with an artificial being that imitates everything from their personality to their dress sense to their sleeping patterns. Other times their existence is simply erased from the student's memory and that is that. Look around when you return this term. Look at the difference between the number of first years and the number of fourth years, and of seventh years."
There was another blinding flash of light and once more Harry found himself in his bed, awake.
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"This," said Tom, gesturing to the concrete-paved alleyway in front of them, lined with uniform white buildings with uniform grey metal doorways, "is the real Diagon Alley." They had fallen into a pattern of sorts, and Harry was quickly beginning to trust Tom completely. His initial surprise at this new revelation faded quickly. After he had learned the truth about Hogwarts, he had been suspecting that the other wizarding places he knew of would have similar secrets.
Tom watched Harry's reaction carefully, before nodding once, quickly making his decision.
"Come, there is more that you need to see." Harry once again clasped his hand.
They landed in a hallway. Strong metal doors with round eight-inch diameter windows stretched for an indeterminate long distance in either direction. The windows were barred with heavy thick steel bars. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a uniform white, the doors a metallic grey (Harry was beginning to think that whoever had designed this mass conspiracy had very unoriginal tastes in décor). The light in the hallway was near to blinding, but what you could see of the rooms beyond the doorways was pitch black, as though none of the light from the hall made it past the bars and into the rooms beyond.
"Welcome," said Tom dryly, with a hint of irony in his voice, "to the Laboratory of the Phoenix."
Harry looked at him, puzzled. "The Laboratory of the Phoenix?" he asked, unsure of what the title meant.
"The Order of the Phoenix," said Tom, "is the ruling government of the wizarding world. Despite what you've learned at Hogwarts, I can assure you that the Ministry is merely a training device. Almost everything you know about the wizarding world is actually false." Tom started walking, stopping every now and then to conjure a ball of fire with his wand and place it in one of the rooms.
"What they do, is invent an enemy, in your case Voldemort, and then they create a force that is supposed to protect you from that enemy-"
"The Ministry," said Harry simply, walking along with him.
Tom nodded, "They made the Ministry incompetent and lax in its duties, so that you'll be even more loyal to the Order when you are introduced to it."
"And when would that be?" asked Harry.
"It depends on the role that they've cast you in," replied Tom. He stopped and leaned against the wall, looking Harry directly in the eye. "I won't lie to you, Harry. Keep that for future reference," Tom's lips quirked up into a slight smile before he sobered once more. "You were specially bred, Harry, to be a weapon. From conception you were meant to be the deciding factor in the war."
"But if Voldemort-" started Harry, confused.
"Oh, Voldemort's fake all right," Tom assured him. "No, this is a different war. The Order of the Phoenix is a little… harsh in enforcing their laws. That might be alright with people by itself, but there's more to it than that." Tom paused and searched his mind for an adequate way to explain.
"The members of the Order get special privileges," said Tom finally. "The thing is, the privileges go far beyond what they should get.
"Every member gets an extortionate salary. There are enough members that the economy is rather badly affected. I don't suppose that you've studied economics?" Harry shook his head. Tom frowned and muttered, "They don't teach these kids anything useful at all…" Louder, he continued, "In layman's terms, money is worth less and less lately, and while the Order members' salaries compensate for the inflation, the rest of the public is left with exactly what they had before, only it isn't worth as much anymore. Basically, Order members are living like kings and almost everyone else is in poverty."
Tom sighed and looked at the ceiling as if he were remembering something. After a moment he went on, "The Order members are each given an estate. Lots of times non-Order members' homes are destroyed to make room for yet another manor for the Order. Order members do not have to pay for things like clothes, food, or for schooling." Tom gave him a piercing look, "Or haven't you ever wondered why you could attend Hogwarts free of charge?"
Harry was rather surprised. In all honesty, he had never thought at all about Hogwarts tuition. It had never come up.
Tom seemed to read his answer from his expression and nodded, "Like I thought."
"So," started Harry, trying to break the uncomfortable silence that had come over the two of them, "if the Order is so oppressive, why hasn't anyone done anything to stop it?"
"We have," said Tom, "but the resistance has a major disadvantage. The Order members do not want to give up their easy life. They're not stupid; they've seen how we live. The resistance isn't as organised, and we have far fewer resources. The Order has recruited all of the most powerful and all of the most wealthy. They've completely outlawed those groups of people that resisted their recruitment system." Tom started ticking a list off his fingers, "Sirens, Hags, Veela, Centaurs, Mer-people, Merrows, Fairies, Nymphs, Elves, Vampires, Giants, Werewolves- just about any sentient beings that aren't fully human, come to think of it."
"But I've seen-" started Harry.
"Artificial beings, Harry, that were created solely to provide diversity and to distract you further from realising that your entire Hogwarts career is a complete waste of time."
There was a bright flash of light and Harry once again found himself in his bed, awake. This time though, he had a lot to think about.
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(A/N: Okay, torture warning for this scene. This scene is the reason the fic is rated R and not PG-13)
"I didn't have time, last night, to show you what we came here for," said Tom. They were once again in that long hallway, the Laboratory of the Phoenix.
Tom strode over to a door. The choice seemed random to Harry, but Tom seemed to know where he was going. Tom didn't bother with opening the door, but rather, walked right through it.
"Tom! What-"
"Shh," said Tom, scowling with nothing but his head sticking out on Harry's side of the door. "Come on, hurry up." Harry noticed that Tom was looking slightly ill, and wondered why.
Harry tentatively stepped towards the door, then, bracing himself, he walked through it. There was an odd tingling sensation that swept through he body as he passed through the door, but otherwise he came out unscathed.
Harry would have inspected the room, had it not been black as pitch inside. If he hadn't known better he would have said that there were no windows or doors to the room at all.
"I told you that the Order was harsh in their deliverance of punishment for breaking the law," said Tom, his voice seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere in the dark. Then suddenly there was a light and Harry blinked a few dozen times as his eyes adjusted. Then he wished that they hadn't.
Displayed before him was the barely-living form of a twelve-year-old girl. She was bald, and naked, and tied, splayed across what looked like an operating table. Those details were forgotten, however, when he saw what had been done to the girl.
She seemed to have been systematically skinned. There was a long cut from her throat all the way to her navel, where it split into two lines to travel down her legs. From this apparent guiding line, strips of skin exactly one centimetre wide were cut off, leaving bare fat and muscle. The strips were not cut off fully though, but were cut far enough that they lay perfectly flat along the surface of the table. Each strip of cut off skin was separated by an equal sized strip of intact skin. The child's eyes were anguished and her mouth open in a near-silent scream. The only thing you could hear of that scream anymore was her harsh-sounding outpouring of breath.
That was the most horrifying thing about it really. That the girl was not only still breathing, but still conscious, and appeared to have been conscious through the entire torture session.
Harry felt bile rise in the back of his throat and tears spring to his eyes. His body seemed to have an idea other than spewing, however. He watched, a passenger in his own form, as he walked over to her side and knelt down so that his head was only slightly above hers. He reached out to cup her unmarked cheek with his hand, and as he did so he began to glow with an inner fire that was first visible in his eyes, then on his whole body.
The glow slowly transferred over to her, until they both shone brightly with a white fire. Harry watched in astonishment as her wounds closed over and her taut muscles relaxed. Her bonds came loose, then fell off altogether. She sat up and looked down at her glowing hands, which slowly dimmed until there was no evidence anything had happened at all, except for the fact that she was completely healed. Then she looked up and directly into Harry's eyes.
"Thank you," she said simply, with no trace of her earlier hoarseness. Then she vanished.
There was a blinding light and Harry awoke, shaking with shock and horror as the image of her sprawled before him, skinned like some grisly dissection gone wrong. He ran to the toilet and gave in to his urge to vomit, as tears streamed down his face.
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Tom did not reappear in his dreams for several days, for which Harry was grateful. He didn't want to see anything like that again. He didn't really want to see Tom again, for fear that the other would show him something similar. His fear didn't stop him from once again seeing Tom standing in front of him just after he had drifted off to sleep.
They were in a forest this time, bright and cheerful, exactly the way Harry didn't feel. "Harry," said Tom softly, searching the boys face for any emotion, which it seemed to be oddly void of, "I am so sorry that you had to see that." Tom closed his eyes and sat down, leaning against a tree, looking truly remorseful. He looked up at Harry, desperate for reassurance that Harry wouldn't desert him.
"What did she do?" asked Harry softly, so softly that it almost couldn't be heard. Tom heard it well enough.
"She stole a loaf of bread because neither she nor her younger brother had eaten in days and they had no money," said Tom soberly. Something about his tone set Harry off.
"How can you be so calm about this?!" shouted Harry angrily, tears constricting both his ability to speak clearly and his ability to breathe. Tom stood abruptly and grabbed Harry roughly by the shoulders.
"Calm, Harry? Calm?!" he shouted before shoving Harry away from him and stepping away, clenching his fists at his sides, hoping to regain at least a semblance of control. "I live with this, Harry. Every single day of my life I live with this. Knowing that it happens and knowing exactly how close I came to being one of them. Great Merlin, Harry, I'm so sorry that seeing a child like that doesn't have quite the same effect on me as it does on you. I'm so sorry that seeing my youngest son drawn and quartered in the middle of a public square with Order members cheering desensitised me, Harry. I'm sorry that I know what the Order is capable of and I'm sorry that I know that that was hardly the worst," Tom was breathing heavily, flushed with tears streaking down his cheeks. He turned away.
"You should go, Harry. Come back in a few days when you're willing to accept that other people have lives worse than yours."
There was a flash and Harry woke up. He turned over onto his stomach and cried.
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Author's Notes: Yes, I know, I said I wouldn't be posting anything until after November 14th. But well… yeah. I'm in serious, desperate need of feedback here.