When Harry Potter's wife and unborn sons are killed he embraces the darkness that only she could keep at bay. Rated M for torture and murder.
The Shadow of Death
Rain cleansed and renewed.
Why then were his hands covered in blood?
Her blood.
As her eyes closed for the final time, so too does he close his eyes.
Harry released the careful hold on his magic and expanded his senses. Magical traces. Three of them, two not hers. Two that he had vouched for during the Death Eater trials. Recognition. Rage.
He kissed her rapidly cooling forehead. "You were always the better person. My love goes with you and our children." Soul rending heartache.
He traced his finger along the gold chain that held the familiar corks that she has worn for as long as he has known her. "Portus."
Her body disappears into the swirling vortex to reappear moments later in the entry hall of Potter Manor. Red tints his vision, so dark it is almost black. His heart skips a beat as his hope and love die and his heart freezes. Cold Resolve.
Harry staggered to his feet, head tilted back looking to the heavens, his silent question of why unanswered. Bloodlust.
Eyes still closed he follows the familiar magical traces around the corner into an alley. Apparation traces. His eyes open. Black, like his heart.
Arms outstretched, palms up, he sends out a surge of magic. For the first time in three years he answers the call. The Wand.
"Kill them all." It whispers in his mind.
"Gladly." Harry responds.
"Burn the world. Salt the earth."
"Starting with Malfoy." He growled as he pulls his magic tight once more and disappears with a crack like thunder.
Pressure. As he is sucked through a hose into subspace.
Resistance. As he encounters the wards that surround and protect Malfoy Manor. His magic spreads across the wards and pulls his ethereal being through the weaknesses it finds. He lands in the entrance hall hard enough to shatter the granite floors, on one knee, right hand firmly on the ground in front of him.
The Stone. An oh so familiar stone gracing a new gold ring adorns his right index finger. The last he had seen of it, it had been lost in the Forbidden Forest, trampled into the ground by the centaurs.
Four pops announce the arrival of the manor elves.
"Who is you!" The obvious leader demands.
Looking up, his black eyes smoking with barely restrained power, "Reckoning."
He stands gracefully, arms outstretched once more.
The Cloak. Missing since the final battle at Hogwarts. Home once more. It turns pitch black as it drapes across his shoulders. Every shadow in the room seems to reach for it.
"Leave the grounds or die with your master." Harry commands.
The lead elf lifts it's hand prepared to defend its master and home. Shadows surge from under the cloak wrapping around the necks of every elf present. Snap! They fall in a heap, necks snapped.
Senses expanded once more he finds them. Draco and Lucius in the study drinking Fire Whiskey. Narcissa in the library at the top of the stairs. Astoria and her child in her rooms sleeping.
As he climbs the stairs more and more shadows reach out for him. Or more accurately for the cloak. Death's Own.
Opening the double doors to the library the shadows obey his command. Narcissa is bound, gagged and dragged to Harry. He smiles cruelly.
"I told you." He whispers. "I told you to never cross me again. Now your spawn and your husband have murdered my wife and unborn sons. The Malfoy line ends today." He finished in a near hiss.
Narcissa is deposited outside the study as Harry ghosts past the room into the family wing to retrieve Astoria and the child. Shadows once more do his bidding as the infant and Draco's wife are bound, gagged and retrieved.
He kicks the door to the study open hard enough to send splinters across the room. Shadows bind Lucius and Draco to their chairs.
"Did you honestly think you would get away with it? That I would not come for you?" Harry hisses, his rage boiling just below his skin.
Astoria and Narcissa are stripped and stuck to the wall. The infant, three maybe four months old is deposited in Harry's arms.
"Tell me why I shouldn't kill the child." He whispers.
Draco, eyes wide with fear, "He's innocent. Scorpios has done nothing. He's too young."
"And my unborn sons? The two you murdered today. What did they do to you?" Harry's voice sibilant in his rage.
"Nothing." Draco responds horrified. "We didn't know she was pregnant."
Harry tilts his head, eyeing Draco. With deliberate slowness his right hand covers the screaming infants face. A quick jerk, a sickening crunch, and the screams cease.
"You took - three lives from me today. Three innocent pure souls." Harry placed the child on the desk in front of Draco. "I take three lives in return. Then you and your father will die as horribly and as painfully as I can make it."
Narcissa floated from the wall, wrapped in shadows, to stand in front of Lucius. The gag dispelled and her screams and pleas for mercy filled the air.
Harry placed his mouth next to her left ear, "Do you know what they did today dear Cissa? One of the sent a Sectumsempra into the stomach of my four month pregnant wife. Twins. Sons to carry on the Potter name. Xander James Potter and Xavier Sirius Black. Two sons to carry on my legacy." He traced his finger down her jaw line tenderly. "One of them sent a piercing hex into her chest. I imagine to destroy her heart. Missed it though. She was drowning in her own blood when I found her. Which would you prefer?" He asked as he poked her in the chest. "A piercing hex to drown in your own blood?" He traced his finger along her stomach from her groin to her left breast. "Or to have your stomach cut open to bleed to death?"
"Please, please, I'll do anything. I won't say anything." Narcissa continued to plead.
Harry covered her mouth. "You die today, my dear. The only question is how. Drowning? Or bleeding out?"
"Will it be quick?" She sobbed.
"No." Harry smirked over her shoulder at Lucius. "Dear Luna lasted nearly fifteen in my arms before she passed. I'm unsure how long she lay there in the street bleeding before I got there. You shall have at least that long to live and suffer."
She closed her eyes tightly and made a decision to hopefully spare Astoria some pain. "Stomach." She sobbed.
Harry's wand slowly traced the same line his finger had traveled previous. An angry red line followed, opening her stomach. Blood raced forth. She screamed once more as her intestines began spilling out from the cut. It took eleven minutes for her screams to fade. Seven more for her last ragged breath to leave her. The shadows released their hold on her and she crumpled to the ground on Lucius's feet.
Astoria was already being held in place in front of Draco. Harry stepped behind her and wandlessly summoned Draco's wand. He placed it at the same spot Luna had been hit. The shadow gag dispelled and her pleading began. Rather than using magic, he slowly and painfully pushed the wand into her chest between two ribs. Centimeter by centimeter the wand impaled her. Her pleading turned to screaming. Three inches in he slowly stirred the wand, centimeter by centimeter. After a full circuit he removed the wand slowly, centimeter by centimeter. He dropped it at Draco's feet.
"My wife died painfully. Murdered by your husband and father in-law. You will die the same way. Though it's little consolation at this point, your death will be nowhere near as painful as their deaths will be." Harry whispered to her.
It took nineteen agonizing minutes for Astoria Malfoy nee Greengrass to release her last bloody foam filled breath. She crumpled to the ground at Draco's feet.
Harry conjured a comfortable leather chair and sat. A glass and the bottle of Fire Whiskey flew into his hands, he filled the glass to the top and offered the bottle up to the Malfoy men. "No? More for me then." He drained it in one go and promptly refilled it.
He kicked back with his feet on the obviously antique and expensive desk. "I told all of you to leave me alone. That I just wanted to get on with my life. That I wanted to raise a family. That I had done my part and killed the Dark Tosser. I testified on your behalf, reduced sentences. Two years in Azkaban rather than life. And this is how you repay me." Harry chuckled darkly. "Well, you wanted my attention so badly, you have it undivided now. What do you want?"
Lucius' face was purple in rage, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed silently at Harry. Draco was staring in shock down at his wife's body. "The hard way then."
"Legilimens." Harry whispered, the elder wand placed against Lucius' temple.
Luna paused in her walk from the grocery store to the nearby alley to apparate home when two figures stepped out of a shadows doorway.
"Lucius, Draco." She greeted guardedly.
"Ah, Mrs. Potter." Lucius replied silkily.
Luna tilted her head and heaved a sigh after a moment. "Should you tread this path, my husband's revenge will be legendary. It will be so horrific and brutal that it will form racial memories to be passed through blood from parent to offspring."
Draco smirked, "Potter doesn't have it in him. The only life he has ever taken was the Dark Lords."
Luna merely arched an eyebrow. "If that is what you choose to believe Draco. The truth however is that my husband has a darkness looming just below the surface, always struggling to get out, to be free. I am the only thing that has stands between that darkness and the annihilation of the magical world."
"Oddly," Draco drawled, " I'm not worried about a mediocre wizard like Potter. Foram!" He jabbed his wand at Luna's chest causing a half-inch wide hole to open up and blood to seep out slowly. Luna grunted as the piercing curse hit and a couple of ribs cracked.
"Sectumsempra!" Lucius' wand slashed through the air causing her stomach to flay open and an anguished scream to escape her throat as she fell to the pavement clutching her stomach.
"Come Draco, the filth has been taken care of."
"What is it Father?" Draco asked as he entered Lucius' study.
Lucius stroked his Dark Mark tenderly. "The others, they want to destroy Potter."
"Why, he hasn't been seen in nearly two years?"
"Yet his ideas live on. His mudblood friend has been able to slowly change the laws. After her latest escapade, purebloods are no longer guaranteed the best jobs at the ministry anymore. Now, whomever is best qualified for the position is supposed to get it, no matter their blood status. Mudbloods and halfbloods taking the jobs that pureblood wizards and witches should be guaranteed.
"The muggleborn tax on businesses has been eliminated, raising taxes on pureblood businesses to make up the difference. Taxes across the board have gone up to cover the costs of her so called reforms. It must end Draco."
"Then why not just kill the mudblood and be done with it? Without her there will be nobody left to push for these changes."
"But so long as Potter is still around, someone will always champion his cause. The mudblood is being taken care of as we speak. Tomorrow, his wife does the weekly shopping in the muggle world. Avery and Nott have her schedule and route. We will wait for her by her apparation point and take her there."
Draco shook his head, "I will not rape her. I will not take the chance she has some disease from Potter that I could bring home to my own wife."
"Fine. We leave at ten fifteen tomorrow. Meet me here."
Draco gave his father a stiff nod and turned from the office. "Oh and Draco."
"Yes Father?"
"It should go without saying, but do not mention this to anyone outside the family."
"Yes Father."
"Gerald, what can I do for you?" Lucius asked the enraged man pacing back and forth across his study.
"That damn mudblood bitch has gone too far this time Lucius. Now, now! Purebloods must earn their jobs at the ministry!" Gerald Nott screamed and flung a sheaf of parchment at Lucius.
"That mudblood cunt managed to get enough support that ministry new hires must pass a competency test. Pay is equal across the board now! And where does all the funding for these reforms and pay raises come from?! By raising the taxes on all businesses registered with the ministry. That's where! Over eighty percent of registered businesses are owned by purebloods. The little bitch is trying to bleed us dry slowly and painfully!" Nott raged.
Lucius dropped the parchment into the rubbish bin. "And what do you plan on doing about it?"
"The old gang, most of them agree. She has to go. So does Potter and his whore. Avery and I, we've been watching her for a few weeks now. Every Thursday she goes to the same grocery store in Aberdaron. That's your best chance to get the whore. We don't dare get too close to the manor house, hell we're not even sure he lives at the manor. Bulstrode tried, the Dark Mark began burning then nearly crippled him when it released cruciatus like pain. So it has to be when she is away from the manor and the only time we can guarantee she'll be away is every Thursday at ten in the morning she goes grocery shopping like some damn house elf."
"And you want me to take care of her?"
"You and Draco. Avery and I are taking care of the mudblood and the blood traitor tonight after the Prophet prints so Potter won't know about their deaths until Friday at the soonest."
Lucius steepled his fingers together. "And how to you plan to handle Potter?"
Nott waved off his concern, "He'll be so broken up over the mudblood, blood traitor and his whore that he'll disappear for a while. With them away from the Wizengamot, we can get Potter declared a war criminal then he becomes the Auror Department's problem."
Lucius smirked, "This could work. I don't like the timing and not having time to make the plan myself, but we'll do it."
"Good. I'll be unavailable until Friday afternoon. I'll floo call when I'm back and we can drink to our success."
Harry continued to rip through Lucius' mind, pulling up every shady deal he had ever committed, every sin, every crime, every associate. Every secret Lucius had was laid bare to the power of Harry's raw rage amplified by Death's Stick. As powerful as the mental attack was, it was also done carefully and deliberately as Harry wanted the man to suffer before granting the sweet release of death.
Lucius cried out in agony as Harry ended the spell. "Thank you Lucius, you were most helpful." He patted the older on the cheek condescendingly. "Now, let's show Draco what real torture is. The Cruciatus is so unoriginal when it comes to inflicting pain. You can only hold it for so long before your victim looses their mind. Muggles though, muggles have been inventing newer and more creative ways to inflict pain and death on each other for centuries. Some of them are true connoisseurs of the art. Why, I met a man in Pakistan a couple of years ago that taught me so much. His record for keeping someone alive during torture was seventy one hours. Sadly, I have not reached his skill level yet as my record is only twenty-three hours. He says I get to impatient, that I move to quickly instead of drawing it out. I think he's right. And imagine, it's all done without magic. Let's find out how long you can last with blood replenisher potions."
Harry pulled a shrunken trunk from his ever present messenger bag and enlarged it. He conjured a table next to it and began pulling tools and instruments from the truck, holding them up and explaining their purpose to the Malfoy males then placing them on the white silk sheet he covered the table in. The last thing he pulled out was a large bundle of four inch long needles.
"These are my favorite to start with. You take a needle and place it under the finger nail like so. Then you take this little hammer here and tap it like so." Lucius screamed out as the needle traveled through the sensitive skin under his thumb nail. "Bloody brilliant isn't it? Something so simple, so every day that can cause so much pain." He tapped the needle again ripping another scream from the man's throat. "That's it. Let it all out. I'm here now." Harry mocked the man.
"I'll kill you Potter." Lucius growled.
"You got your arse kicked by a house elf the first time you tried." Harry soaked a cotton ball in some muggle bourbon. He put the soaked cotton ball on the end of the needle drawing a gasp from Lucius at the added weight. With a smirk Harry lit the cotton ball on fire and sat back to enjoy the show. As Lucius screamed Harry waved his hands through the air like he was conducting an orchestra. When the cotton ball finally died he tapped the needle again setting off another scream from the man. Multiple needles under every finger nail and toe nail were slowly tapped into place over the next three hours.
Harry pulled a bundle of wires from the chest and began clipping leads to each of the needles. The other ends were plugged into a large flat crystal. "This is something I've been working on a long while now so I appreciate you volunteering for me as my first victim. I've based it on a muggle TENS unit. Basically, it sends a short arc of current down the line to wherever the other end is attached." Harry placed his wand into the largest hole in the top of the crystal. "Fulgur." An arc of lightning flashed into the crystal and swirled around inside it almost hypnotically. He removed his wand and tapped a rune on the front of the crystal. Several seconds passed before Lucius once more screamed in pain as the lightning released in tiny pulses randomly electrifying the embedded needles.
Harry stood behind Draco softly petting the blondes head. "It's beautiful isn't it. There's enough charge in that crystal to last at least a couple of hours. Daddy dearest is in for a rough time. So while Daddy is indisposed I want to try a technique on you. Are you familiar with flaying Draco?"
Draco shook his head in panic. "That's too bad little dragon. However, you will be intimately familiar with it by the end of the day." Draco found himself held up in midair in an 'X'. "Muggles are so inventive Draco." Harry held up a long thin knife. "They don't have magic you see, so they have to rely on their ingenuity. Muggle knife see? But a few runes and becomes sharper than a razor blade. This is a fillet knife, meant for filleting fish and other meats. But the important part to you is with the curve like this and the enchantments I placed on it, one can theoretically remove thin layers of skin or meat. Don't be afraid to scream out if it becomes too much for you."
Harry finished cleaning and packing up his tools leaving out only a massively expanded muggle military duffel bag and heaved a great theatrical sigh. "Seven and a half hours Lucius. I can't believe your pureblood heart gave out to a bit of eckeltricity." Harry cast preservation charms on the five Malfoys and levitated them into the duffel. A pinch of floo powder and he was gone to the Nott ancestral home.
The next few days, Death would follow closely on the path Harry tread.
The Wizengamot was in an uproar. Azkaban had been broken into and nearly a hundred prisoners killed. The goblins had shuttered the doors to Gringotts. Twelve of their own members were missing and six of those members entire families were missing as well. The magically sealed doors suddenly blew into splinters flying in all directions, stopping in midair before actually hitting anyone. Harry Potter strode in with a duffle bag thrown over one shoulder. As he passed the remains of the door they repaired themselves and sealed shut once again. The ornate bench where the minister, chief warlock and DMLE director were sitting was swept from the raised stage along with its occupants and a golden throne appeared. Harry dropped the bag with a meaty squelch and sat haphazardly on the throne, one leg kicked over the arm.
He scanned the room slowly ignoring the shouts of protest. Shadows leapt out everywhere and seven members were hauled from their seats on forced to kneel on the floor in front of the raised stage. Harry waved his hand airily and the room silenced.
"Three and a half years ago I defeated the Dark Wanker Flight From Death, AKA Voldemort, AKA Tom Riddle. Three years ago I told this world to leave me and mine alone. I wanted nothing to do with it or you anymore. That to draw me back for any reason would a folly of epic proportions.
"Nine days ago," Harry drawled, "My wedding band let me know my wife had been attacked - magically. When I found my wife laying in the rain in a filthy street gutter, she was bleeding out from a dark cutting curse across her abdomen and a piercing hex to her left lung. I'm not quite sure if she died from the blood loss or drowned in her own blood. Point being though, that she was attacked because she was my wife. With her death she took my unborn twin sons with her. The heirs to the Potter and Black and families. The two that would eventually sit in those two seats just there." Harry pointed to the upper tier where the Potter and Black seats sat vacant.
"My investigation showed two familiar magical signatures. Two men, who I testified on behalf of, murdered my wife and sons. I followed their apparation trail and found myself in the entrance hall to Malfoy Manor." Harry grinned sadistically. "I returned the favor. The Malfoy line is no more." He waved his hand again and the five bodies flew from the bag and stuck to the wall behind him.
"Malfoy killed my wife to draw me out on advice from Nott and Avery." The four members of the Nott family flew from the bag to the wall. The two Avery men joined them. "Nott was apparently not happy with the actions of Hermione Weasley nee Granger. He and Avery killed her, her husband Ronald, and my goddaughter Rose. I returned the favor. I entombed my wife and sons at Potter Manor and returned to the house we called home together. Only my home was no longer standing. It was a pile of debris and ash." Nine bodies flew from the bag to the wall. "These nine men laid waste to my home." Sixteen more bodies joined them. "All of the memories, mementos, every trace of my wife was destroyed. I took theirs and their families life in payment."
Thirty-one goblin bodies appeared on the wall. "Gringotts is the only ones who knew where to find me. They are the only ones who knew my wards. THEY SOLD ME OUT!" Harry was breathing heavily, his magic lashing out violently, the shadows writhing and humming waiting for his bidding. "This is the clan that was responsible. Sadly, the rest of the Goblin Nation did not agree with my retribution. They have been removed from this land to the last soul. The gnomes of Switzerland have agreed to take over in their stead. The bank should reopen in a few days as they get things cleaned up and put to order there. I'm afraid to say it was rather a mess once I was done.
"Now all of these individuals that attacked me and mine have one thing in common. Anyone care to take a guess what that is?" Harry looked around the hall, everyone was staring in shock at the bodies so casually displayed, many of them with obvious torture wounds. "They all bore the dark mark. So me thinks to me self, Harry ole chum, what's to stop the next dark lord or even one of these so called upstanding pureblood citizens from freeing those nutty fucks in Azkaban? Obviously I cannot trust that these scum will not attempt to come after me again so I did what this sad excuse of wizards and witches in front of me could not do themselves. I killed them all. Quick and painless. A heart stopping curse on all of them. No need to worry about the Dementors, I only left one alive and he has agreed to never leave the island on pain of agonizing death.
"These seven kneeling here are the last of the Death Eaters on the British Isles. There are still many abroad that I'll track down before long, but these are the last of the infestation on this once great island." Shadows leapt from around the room and tore the seven men to pieces. "Their families have already been taken care of." Harry sniffed as a pile of bodies flew from the duffel and landed on the macabre pile of body parts.
"Now, I'll be travelling for a time. I have eleven Death Eaters to track down and dispose of. I've no clue really how long it will take, maybe a month, maybe a year or two, but I will find them, and I will kill them. When I return, this island had better be great again. That pitiful excuse for a school up there in Scotland had better be brought into line with ICW standards. The corruption in this ministry had better be rooted out. The discriminatory and bigoted laws you lot like to hide behind had better become about equality or stricken completely. You will not like it if I have to do it myself."
Harry stood from his throne and grinned to the occupants of the hall. "Cheer up! A new dawn has risen ladies and gentlemen. Each and every magical on these islands answers to me now. And I'm all out of mercy."
"Rule them." The Wand cackles. "A much better plan. You have succeeded where even Grindelwald and Dumbledore failed."