Warning: This story will contain lots of character death and many side tangents or semi-unrelated stories. This will not be a romance. There will be a few OC's in the story. At points, rape may be implied and torture mentioned/described. There will be discrepancies from cannon in many, many ways. I do not own any original Harry Potter characters/events/places/dialogue/plots/etc. Read on at your own discretion.
A NIGHTMARE'S COMFORT
Story by: Meerhawk
Original Source: Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
PROLOGUE ONE: THE SLAUGHTER OF HOGWARTS
In which the Wizarding World falls to the Dark Lord Voldemort.
Harry moaned in fear. Screams echoed through his head, the voices of his parents joined by those of his friends: Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Dean, Seamus, Fred, George, the Quidditch team, the rest of Griffindor, every damn student and teacher that had been at Hogwarts, every student and teacher that had be alive and breathing and thinking in Hogwarts during those last few days. In that time, after Dumbledor had succumbed to the withering curse and Voldemort took over the ministry, they all had had to become friends. The two events had happened nearly simultaneously, twin hammer-blows flattening the Wizarding World quickly and efficiently. The DMLE was dissolved, its ex-members forced to choose between joining the ranks of the death eaters or joining the ranks of the dearly departed.
Many chose the latter option.
When Voldemort came for Hogwarts, the war was already over. The wards had all but fallen with the death of the headmaster, waiting for a new person to assume the role. It would never happen. They were barely able to warn the defenders of the attack, not that that changed anything. A handful of schoolteachers and students against the most powerful dark lord and his elite fighters wasn't a battle. It was a blood bath.
The shouts of fear and panic as the teachers ordered the students into their dorms even as the front doors were ripped apart like wet cardboard never leave Harry's tormented mind. Harry could see the death of each teacher, even the ones that he hadn't witnessed himself. Slughorn was the first to go. He tried to use his connections with various members of the invasion force to his advantage. Amycus Carrow sent a piercing curse through his skull, remarking, "Slimy bastard should've paid me more attention." Filch, in a display that Harry would never forget (even if Voldemort and the dementors hadn't already made that impossible anyway), had donned one of the suits of armour and charged at the death eater line, holding a sword like a lance and bellowing with rage. Rodolphus Lestrange was surprised enough to let the squib get close. Finally, he smartly sidestepped the blade, crouched, and sent a killing curse under the breastplate. Mrs. Norris leaped onto his leg, clawing and snarling. He kicked her off and his brother smashed her into the stone floor with an overpowered banisher.
Burbage, Hooch, and Sinistra were the next ones to fall. They collapsed one by one under a wave of bombardas, bone breakers, and cutting curses. Sprout made a huge venomous tentacula rip through the very floor of the castle. Its tentacles crushed Goyle Senior and Avery before someone disintegrated it and Voldemort himself decapitated the herbologist with a flick of his wand. Her shield hadn't even slowed the curse down.
Vector directed a swarm of swords, spears, and cutlery through the halls and towards the group. Bellatrix stepped forward, wresting control of the metal from the less experienced witch and melting it. Vector was soon encased in a tomb of rapidly cooling metal.
Trelawney, in another startling show, had disillusioned herself and, by lying on the ground and waiting for them to walk past her, had gotten into the middle of the death eater lines. She shrieked, "BOMBARDA MAXIMA!" and nearly two dozen death eaters were engulfed by the resulting explosion, Rabastan, Selwyn, Tracers, and Yaxley among them. Her sacrifice barely made a dent in the ranks of Voldemort's outer circle.
Voldemort paused for a second and watched as Peeves hurled dung bombs and Weasley Wizarding Wheezes fireworks at the death eater shields. HE slammed the base of his wand against the stone floor and silvery threads shot out. Each thread sought out an individual ghost and latched on, tearing them apart. Binns, Nearly Headless Nick, Peeves, the Bloody Baron, the Grey Lady, the Fat Friar, Moaning Myrtle, and many other forgotten spectres were quickly exorcised.
Hagrid charged into the fray from behind the death eaters, his giant blood making him partially spell resistance, slinging spells from his umbrella. Fang and Fluffy ran by his side. Together, they brought down Gibbon, Jugson, and two other outer circle death eaters before a terrified group of lesser death eaters brought them down with several killing curses. The group sneered down at their kill, forgetting their fear of just a moment ago. Moments later, they began to match the two dogs as arrows sprouted from them like macabre fur.
Panicked cries alerted the rest of them to the arrival of the centaurs. Voldemort, Bellatrix, and Alecto sent a trio of fiendfyres at the herd. Firenze and Bane, who had lead the charge side by side, reunited against the dark lord, perished first.
McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape, and, oddly, Pomfrey were the only ones to put up much of a fight against the attackers. Curses and jinxes of all kinds hurtled between the battling groups, the air crackling with energy. The death eaters, however, had numbers, training, power, bloodthirstiness, and the dark lord on their side. Pomfrey fell first; she had spent too many years of late healing instead of duelling, but she brought three others down with her. McGonagall, her curses fuelled by pure determination and utter refusal to let these monsters at her students, defeated Dolohov and a half-dozen others before she, too, fell, crumpling into a ball of blood and gore. After crushing Rowle and four lesser wizards, Flitwick, slightly rusty and short of stature, seemed to evaporate into the air, gone from one moment to the next. A faint red mist was the only sign that he had ever been there, and now Snape battled alone.
The dark wizard battling in the name of the light, the betrayer turned hero, only grew stronger in his desperation. He danced, curses never touching him, explosions blocked by shields or deflected back at the approaching horde of black robes and skull masks. Spells and jinxes of all manner and darkness shot between the two groups, corrupting and shredding the air as they passed. Voldemort's insults and accusations never touched him. His technique was flawless, up until Voldemort, with a malicious smirk, glamoured all of the death eaters as copies of Lily. Snape hesitated, frozen by the sight of dozens of beautiful, snarling Lilys staring at him. Voldemort sent an Avada Kedavra at him, the green light splashing against his chest as he flopped lifelessly to the ground. During his brief but incredible fight, he had killed Nott Senior, Mulciber, and eleven other death eaters.
Madame Pince enchanted the library entrance with dozens of lethal traps. Three lesser death eaters fell to the enchantments before they were taken down. She survived for another six days, through she wished that she hadn't.
Draco Malfoy had been sent to retrieve the diadem just before the invasion began. He returned to the first floor in time to watch as the death eaters, many of them now unmasked, rounded up hundreds of students and did whatever they wanted. He stared from the shadows, frozen with horror and helplessness as student after student, regardless of house or age, were mutilated, cursed, put under the cruciatus, forced to do horrible things with the imperious, and, if they were lucky, finally killed by the killing curse. Female students of all ages were considered valuable by the death eaters.
He recovered, and marched stiffly towards Voldemort. Upon seeing the diadem held loosely in one hand, the dark lord sneered and turned towards his lieutenant, hissing, "It sseemss that your sson hass done well, Luciusss." While the dark lord was distracted, busy praising Draco to his father, Draco whipped out his wand, fingers trembling white with rage, and cast fiendfyre. his eyes full of regret, but only for his actions in aiding the monsters before him. The dark flame devoured him and the diadem, his rage powering the wild curse as it tore through the hall. By the time Voldemort, seething with rage, had finally managed to extinguish the flame, nearly seventy death eaters, over a hundred students, and Lucius Malfoy had been reduced to ash.
In various towers, hallways, and staircases, brave students fought desperately for themselves and for each other. A cornered wolf is the deadliest foe, but these wolves were only pups. Each one died in pain and agony, their deaths ultimately futile.
Thanks to Voldemort, Harry saw every death, every torture, every spell cast or unspeakable act performed against a student or professor during the attack. He saw people jumping in front of spells meant for others, people fighting for their lives, but, most of all, he watched as people were tortured and killed. He hung, bound to the roof of the great hall, forced to watch everything as it happened below him. He watched as Draco sacrificed himself, tears falling from unblinking eyes and evaporating in the heat from Draco's fiendfyre.
He watched everything that the death eaters did to each student and professor up close; he could hear the screams and wails, smell the blood and sweat and soiled robes. He witnessed hundreds of thousands of acts of torture, of murder, and of things even worse.
And then, after this hell had ended, Voldemort had thrown him into the deepest, darkest cell in Azkaban. Dementors swarmed his cell constantly. Whenever the guards bring him his food, it takes three patroni, no doubt inspired by their recent activities in Hogwarts, just to make them back off. Usually, one of the inner circle, accompanied by a pair of subordinates, is the one to bring the food. Each time they do, they spend several moments outside the cell shouting insults and rude names through the bars. Harry is always far to despondent to even hear the abuse hurled at him, too preoccupied with reliving the Slaughter of Hogwarts.