Content Warnings: Dark fic: character deaths, torture, madness... This really isn't pleasant. And it doesn't have a happy ending.
Summary: What price might have to be paid to defeat Voldemort once and for all?
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling, who is doing a fantastic job so far. If she heads in the direction I've indicated in this fic, though, I'll have to send her a howler. I make no money off of this fic, so please don't sue (feedback would be nice, though). Do not archive without permission. Soul magic is my own invention, so don't take it to be an actual part of the Harry Potteruniverse.
Author's Notes: My second visit to the world of Harry Potter and it's nastier than the first! Sigh. One day I'll learn how to write nice happy stories (yeah, right, like that's going to happen).
Oddly enough, the 'quote' from Rise and Fall started life as an author's note. The story itself started off because I read too many of Lupin's fics and then went and did the dishes (which doesn't involve my brain, so I spent the entire time thinking about Harry Potter fic. There are worse ways to spend half an hour).
Please, if you have any comments or suggestions I would love to hear from you. Anything from "You can't spell Voldemort" to "You need to expand such-and-such so it makes more sense". I'm very interested to know what people think of this.
The Bright-Lit Side of Madness
by Bil!
And sometimes,
When all the world is pain and fear,
And what you seek isn't anywhere,
All you can do is dance,
Dance on the bright-lit side of madness.
Of the time when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named strove a second time for the power to rule our world there is little record. And all we know of the hero who saved us all, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, comes from the written histories of his school years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
But what of the man he became? He cannot have stayed the boy we have all read of. As he grew up our world reached its darkest hour, when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had reached a level of power far greater than he had ever had before.
We do not know how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was finally defeated, only that he was, by the same young man who defeated him as a baby. How this young man, little more than a boy, could destroy the man that even the most powerful wizards feared, we don't know.
But we do know that to find the Dark Lord must have required the seeker to delve deep into the worst evils of that time, to experience, see and do things that no person should ever know of. Harry Potter must have grown up very quickly there at the end.
When one fights evil there is always the possibility of being tainted by it, and Harry Potter fought evil more times than we, in our time of peace and safety, can imagine. What might it have done to him?
We know of the boy. But what happened to the man, the one who destroyed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and was never seen again? Who was he?
And what price did he pay for our freedom?
- from The Rise and Fall of Lord Voldemort by James Weasley, published by Wizarding Press Ltd, 2059
It is raining again. It has done that a lot in the three months he has been hidden away in this forest; in fact, he muses, it's probably the reason no one else comes here. The madness giggles at the thought.
No, rain isn't the reason. People stay away from this forest because it is home to the Old Beings, the creatures of nightmare, who live to hurt and harm and kill. There are things in this forest that no human had ever seen and lived to tell of, until he came.
But there is nothing in this forest that will harm him, everything keeps far away from him. He tells himself that they sense the madness and fear it - the madness likes this idea. But somewhere, deeper within him than even the madness can go, he knows it isn't the madness that the other creatures fear, it is him. What he has become.
Sitting cross-legged at the entrance to the cave that is his home, he watches the rain splatter down onto the ground in the afternoon gloom, dripping drearily from the thick canopy. A bird - maybe a bird - calls desultorily in the near distance, the only sound other than the dull patter of water on dead leaves. The smell of wet, rotting leaves permeates the heavy air, but he ignores it, staring out at the trees standing ghost-grey in the drizzle.
He shifts position slightly and pain flares out along his side, jabbing maliciously into his flesh. Purposefully breathing deeply, he feels the burning pain scrape harshly across his nerves, aching twinges skittering across his skin and driving white-hot daggers deep into his flesh. The madness giggles, taking twisted pleasure in the agonies, but he never flinches, showing no reaction to the pain.
Moving of their own accord, his fingers curl around the crude bandage binding his side, pulling blindly at it until they loosen it. The puckered, twisted scab is rough under his questing fingers, and a fierce pain, almost exquisite in its agony, springs up under the pressure, darting a thousand stabbing needles into his skin.
The deep dagger wound is Voldemort's final legacy, the last injury the oppressor of the wizarding world will ever make; it hasn't healed even after three months.
Of course, there might be a reason for that.
He picks at the scab, mechanically tearing off thin strips and not wincing as each jerk exposes more raw nerves. He still stares out at the rain - an observer might think him completely oblivious to what he is doing. But he knows, he knows it very well; he can feel each and every nerve screaming its complaint. It's just that he doesn't care.
He doesn't care about the pain, doesn't care about the damage he is doing himself. There is a release in it, some tiny measure of absolution, of penance. For he is the Boy Who Lived, the Boy Who Lived while those around him died, each one tearing a hole in his heart until now there is no heart left, only hole. So much pain that sometimes he thinks he will never feel again. Sometimes he wishes he wouldn't.
But he deserves the pain, for who he is and what he is - what he has become.
And so he sits there, staring unflinchingly into the distance, digging away at the scab as if trying to break his soul out from the scars that cover it, and he remembers...
Harry sat in the middle of the heavily spelled and protected camp, waiting impatiently for news, any news. It was quiet, the camp almost empty and the surrounding woods silent. He hated quiet. Quiet meant he could hear the skittering voice whispering at the edge of his mind. Quiet meant there was nothing to distract him from blood-soaked thought and memory or from the twinges of pain from the myriad injuries he had gained over the years. Quiet was a nightmare.
Despite the summer sun trickling down through the trees he shivered as the tail end of a memory drifted past his thoughts. Hating eyes glaring at him, spells screaming through him, tearing him to pieces one tiny section at a time... He jolted back to the camp with a gasp and wiped surreptitiously at the cold sweat on his forehead, glancing at his companion to see if she'd noticed.
He needn't have worried. Hermione was locked away in her own little world, the crooked fingers of her right hand flicking nervous patterns in the dust. The fingers were a legacy of the time she had spent as a Death Eater's captive, when every bone in her fingers had been methodically broken - torture not for information, but for fun. By the time she had been rescued the bones had all set crookedly, and now she had difficulty controlling their movements.
Looking away from her poor, twisted fingers, he studied her face, concentrating so as to drive away the whispering voice and the memories. She was gaunt, as he was, as they all were. Resistance fighters didn't tend to have a steady supply of good food, especially when magic was not only a severe drain on strength, but also a beacon to Voldemort's followers.
Her hair was cropped short, no longer than his, making her face look even thinner than it was, and a dark scar ran from her chin right up over her left cheek to the temple, where a Death Eater's had nearly sliced her head open. Haunted and dull, her eyes stared unseeingly at her fidgeting fingers, her mind lost somewhere in the darkness and the fighting that was their life now.
Harry looked away. Even the whispering was better than continuing to stare at her - he took comfort from her presence, but looking at her only reminded him of all they had lost. The girl who had been his friend was long gone, now there was only a young woman who had seen far far too much.
If he could, he would give anything to turn the clock back, to make sure this never happened, to make sure she never became what she was.
It was all Voldemort's fault.
The man's second rise to power had been so much more terrible than the first, though there were many who once would never believed that such a thing could be possible. Hogwarts had been closed half-way through Harry's sixth year, but he had refused to go back to the Dursley's and had instead determined to seek out Voldemort and try to destroy him. Although he had meant to go alone, he had been followed by a variety of students and teachers, and they had been joined by more people as they searched.
But Voldemort was not an easy man to find. They had spent several years searching for him, following shreds of rumour, snippets of information. They'd even used torture, later on. Once, Harry would never have considered it. But now, they had all seen so much, been through so much, done so much. Harry had killed people with his bare hands, had seen their blood drip uselessly to the ground. Eventually, when Minerva had suggested torture on a captured Death Eater, no one had protested. They had all been tortured themselves at one time or another, and somehow it didn't seem so repugnant anymore. There was so much pain and anguish around them that a little more didn't really seem to make much difference.
He still remembered the first one they'd tortured. He'd been in Ravenclaw once, and Harry had known him by sight. It hadn't taken long for the man - boy, really - to give up and break down. His screams had haunted Harry for a long time, but now they were mixed with the screams of others, Harry's friends, foes... Even his own screams. There were a lot of screams caught inside his head. The whispers liked to use them sometimes, to taunt him.
Movement startled Harry out of his reverie and he glanced up to see Percy, who hesitated, looking at Harry and Hermione with hungry eyes before jerking sideways and walking away. Percy wanted to stay close to his brother's friends, as if to fill the hole inside him, but his presence was too great a reminder of what they had lost. His hair was an exact match for Ron's vibrant red, and it just hurt too much.
For Ron was dead.
After the first skirmishes with Voldemort's followers it had been Ron who had pulled through his fears and kept everyone's morale up. Their task had seemed hopeless, but Ron had laughed and joked and cajoled everyone into believing they could succeed. Ron's Rebels, he had called the group, pretending to believe everyone was following him. He had learnt to hide his fear so completely that most people didn't believe he felt any.
But Ron had died at the hands of a Death Eater, and Harry had held his broken, lifeless body. Though he hadn't cried, it being too painful for tears, Harry had felt his soul tear open. He and Hermione had huddled together, dry-eyed and pale-faced, watching Dumbledore reverently cremate Ron's body in brilliant blue flame. It was then that Harry first heard the quiet whispers at the back of his mind.
And every death after that, every time he killed, the hole in his soul grew larger, the whisperings got louder. He knew he was going mad, with all the death and agony that surrounded him all the time, but so were the others. Percy often looked like he listened to a voice no one else could hear; the merry twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes had been replaced by an unnerving and unpleasant gleam; Minerva twitched constantly, spinning around every now and then as though an invisible hand had touched her shoulder; Hermione never spoke any more, only stayed near Harry like a solid shadow.
They were all of them slowly going mad.
"Harry." He looked up to see Dumbledore, looking old and haggard as he always did now, but with more animation in his face than had been there in a long time. Hermione's fingers swirled quicker through the dust.
"You've found him?" But he didn't need to ask the question. They had him. Voldemort was theirs.
Dumbledore actually smiled, if wearily. "We have found him."
Harry titled his head back, closing his eyes. There was no triumph, no joy in the news. Only the knowledge that soon this would be finished, one way or another. It wasn't a happy thought, nor an unhappy thought; he felt empty, drained.
Opening his eyes again, he saw Dumbledore watching him custodially, Hermione watching him with something that actually approached interest. "Then let's go."
It was dark by the time they reached their destination, a house a little way in from the edge of a great forest. The place was well-guarded, Voldemort's followers many and fierce. The fighting went on for a long time, flashes of magic lighting up the dark woods. At some stage the house began to burn wildly, yellow and purple flames licking up to the sky. Voldemort came forward in the thick of a cluster of Death Eaters, but Harry couldn't near him, too busy fighting for his life amongst the trees.
It was there that Snape died, taking a killing curse intended for Harry. Harry crouched at his side, staring in wonder at his pale face, lit by the leaping flames of the burning building, for the man's hatred of Harry had never lessened. "Potter, you fool!" Snape snarled weakly. "Get up and kill him."
Shocked into action, Harry ran, dodging through the remnants of the fighting, stumbling over the Death Eaters and friends who littered the ground like fallen leaves. He searched wildly, looking for Voldemort. If they could just kill Voldemort...
A Death Eater appeared before him and Harry raised his wand, but the man turned to face him, revealing a face he knew: Draco Malfoy, with relief flashing in his haunted eyes. Harry's once enemy was only skin and bone, his body language beaten and cowed, and where he might once have felt anger or disgust, Harry felt only pity.
For a long, drawn-out moment they stared at each other, Malfoy's limbs jerking as though he resisted some great force. Instead of the loathing and arrogance that had once marked his face there was pain and fear... and a little bit of hope. His thin, claw-like fingers scratched spasmodically at the spot on his arm where the Death Mark was, as if its owner wanted to tear it off his skin.
"Kill him, Potter," Malfoy whimpered, struggling against some unseen force. "Let me die. Kill him, kill him, kill him kill him kill him..." He staggered away, still muttering the mantra.
One more reason to destroy Voldemort, as if Harry didn't have enough already. Blood slicked the dirt underfoot, his dearest friends had paid with their lives and Voldemort still hadn't fallen, still hadn't died. Harry could see him now, one of the few still standing, silhouetted against the flames.
The Dark Lord waved his wand and Harry saw another friend die. It was too much. He had seen too much death and suffering in the years he had sought Voldemort, lost so much, given up so much... All these people had died and it was all. Voldemort's. FAULT!
Standing there in the darkness he was so tired of the pain and the fear and the dying and the killing, and the anger just bubbled up inside him, floating him on the flames of madness. He exploded.
The words tumbled out of his mouth from deep within him, dark and terrible words oozing pain and anguish and a deep, dank hatred. Ancient words that he had never heard before and didn't understand, visceral, primal words that had been wrenched from his very soul.
The madness engulfed him, not whispering now but shouting, filling his mind with a sick, horrible laughter that went on and on until he would have done anything to make it stop.
Had he done his seventh year at Hogwarts, Harry might have learned of soul magic, the ancient dark magic that no one could do anymore, a magic of horrific power, created from suffering, that could only bring more suffering. But he hadn't learned of it, and didn't understand what he had done.
The magic spurted fitfully from his hands, ignoring his wand, wriggling and twisting grotesquely as it shot towards Voldemort, who had time for only a brief shocked look before it engulfed him. It crawled fitfully over him, crackling energies in blood reds and sickly greens, burning him, biting him, taunting him. He tried to stumble away from it, falling near Harry. It was torturing him in every awful way that ever haunted a nightmare, and he opened his mouth and shrieked like a mad, mortally wounded animal. At the sound the magic seemed to hesitate, and Voldemort fell silent, raising his head weakly to see Harry, frozen to the spot.
Suddenly a sliver dagger glinted in Voldemort's hand and he threw it awkwardly at Harry. It sliced into Harry's side, biting deep into the flesh and providing a physical pain to complement his mental one. But the pain didn't slow him down, it galvanised him.
The dark, dreadful words came easier now, the madness saying them with him; they fed on his pain and tore through his soul. Throwing his arms out, Harry felt the magic thunder through him in delighted agony, searching out every living Death Eater in the immediate vicinity and possible those further away as well.
The wood reverberated with screams, for, like Voldemort writhing on the ground before him, Harry knew that every pain each person had ever inflicted had been returned upon them. Every suffering, however small, was now turned upon its creator, years of pain bound into just a few minutes.
After several long minutes the shrieks faded away, but Harry, watching Voldemort with a fascinated horror, knew that this wasn't because the pain had stopped. Rather, it had become so intense that screaming wasn't even thought of. This was nothing like the torturing he had done for information. This wasn't the breaking of a body, it was the shredding of a soul.
It was the most terrible sight Harry had yet seen, but he watched it all, as the pain thrust madness into Voldemort's pallid features, as insanity, the last refuge from suffering, took over. Harry recognised the look, the shade darkening the eyes - it laughed at him from every reflection, lurking in green eyes that had seen and felt too much.
Finally, finally, Voldemort was still. There was a pause, as if the world held its breath, then from Voldemort's corpse rose a grey ghost wearing Voldemort's face. He stared at Harry, eyes wide with fear, mouth moving silently, before abruptly crumbling into a handful of dust, to be distributed across the four winds and never to plague the world again. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, had finally destroyed the man who had terrorised two generations and ruined so many lives.
But there was no triumph in Harry's heart, no exulting in the task finally completed, the evil finally stopped. Only a weary, bone-tired sadness as the madness laughed at him, crooning ugly taunts.
He looked about the battlefield, lit by the dancing flames still devouring the house, to see friends and foe alike scattered like twigs before a storm. It looked as though no one had survived but him, and the horror and the anguish nearly made his knees give way. What good was victory when the price was so so high?
From where he stood he could see Hermione, anger and fear and fierce determination written across her face: only in death could he now see traces of the girl who had been his friend so long ago. A little way from her lay Draco, spread out on his back as if he was looking up at the stars through the trees. His battered, sickly features were happy, as though in the last instant death had brought him welcome release.
Movement, and Harry realised one other person had survived this final battle, the one person who had never feared Voldemort: Dumbledore. He moved to stand looking down at Malfoy, then lifted his head and met Harry's eyes. There Harry saw the most terrible, horrible thing he would ever see, even if he lived for a hundred lifetimes: fear. Fear of him.
The madness snarled at Dumbledore, and the soul magic stirred deep within Harry, reaching out, reacting to Harry's horror by trying to destroy its source, by trying to kill Dumbledore in the most painful way it could. It almost succeeded. Harry slammed it back inside him, stumbling backwards, away from Dumbledore. He tripped and fell, landing beside Voldemort's body and seeing the blank eyes, the face frozen in a final rictus of agony. He had done that. And nearly done the same to Dumbledore.
He picked himself up and ran. Dumbledore didn't even try to stop him, and Harry, heartsick, just ran and ran and ran, trying to escape the thing inside him, the terror that lived within him now. The madness laughed wildly as the soul magic tried to free itself from Harry's terrified control, seeking to taste blood again, and he vowed he would never go near another person again. Let the world think he was dead. Let them call him a hero or revile him as a villain. He didn't care.
For he could hear the madness giggling in his mind, feel the terrible magic struggling within him, and he knew he could never be free again.
Liquid warmth brings him back out of his memories. His fingers are wet and sticky, and he pulls them away from the scab to look at them. Blood, pouring thickly down his hand, drips onto the ground like the rain outside, like the tears he no longer knows how to shed.
He watches it disinterestedly as it pools into a dark puddle on the rock, covering over the dark stain already made by three months worth of blood. The dripping slows as blood begins to trickle hotly down his side, soaking into a robe already stiff with dry blood.
The madness laughs at it, at the falling drops splattering redly in the dust, at the pain digging angrily into his side, and the magic stirs hungrily. Outwardly he shows no sign of any of it, his face blank and lifeless as he lifts his head to stare out at the rain once more.
Without him meaning it to, his hand falls back to the scab, continuing to pick at it. Blood flows, nerves scream, the magic quivers and the madness laughs...
And the Boy Who Lived, saviour of a world, sits staring out at the rain like a forgotten statue, all alone.
Fin
2003