A/N: I might possibly continue this. Possibly. I have a few ideas on where this story could go, but I might not ever have the time to do so and I felt it was at least good enough to be worth trying to publish as it is.
Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement intended.
He was a shadow. At least for the time being.
And this shadow was waiting amongst his peers, along the wall of a darkened, big room in a big house. He watched the room as he waited, the furniture, the pictures in the bookshelf, people moving around in their own worlds of memories. The paintings on the walls, who were all eyeing him suspiciously. They knew he had no place here, but he had silenced them. They would not be able to give any warnings.
He briefly wondered what they would look like afterwards.
Now he could hear footsteps outside. The house, like so many other houses he had visited these last years, was far away from any other house, living in the shadow of isolation. Everything about it was old. Everything about it was strange, but it was the kind of strangeness he had grown used to over the years. Things like moving photographs, talking paintings, they did not overwhelm him as much as they had done before.
Like most other wizarding families, they had shielded their home with protective charms. But they had somehow missed how easy one can break in by using a simple tool. In so many ways, magic was limiting.
The footsteps came closer, and he heard their voices outside.
He took a tight grip on his wand. It rested against his thigh. He was ready. His heart beat hard in expectation. The people in the paintings looked at him, eyes widening when they saw his smile.
The door creaked. And a thin line of light fell upon the floor, chasing the shadow away. He gripped his wand tighter. Smiling. The shadow smiling. The paintings covered their faces or shook their fists at him, cursing him silently. Some even grabbed their wands, if they had them. No matter. They were just memories anyway.
In the Muggle world, they wouldn't even move. So amazing, this magic. All the things he could do with it. All the things anyone could do, and still they did not understand its full potential. The potential of combining two worlds and watching them dance. Well, they would see; everyone would see.
Light fell inside, closing up on him, and he took a step backwards as a man entered the room and turned on the lamps with a flick of his wand. Then he stopped.
The man looked at the intruder. He looked surprised, but not scared. In any case, he didn't have the time to dwell on it.
"Imperio." It was just a whisper. He never raised his voice; never needed to. The man's eyes became blank, his face glassy. His mind was a wondrous thing, a tangle of emotions that he would never ever have to deal with again.
The first time he tried this most useful of Unforgivable Curses, the pure sensation of it had left him speechless. Now, he took a more matter-of-factly approach. He raised his wand and forced the man to walk aside, giving him a full view of the room. Behind him, a woman and a teenage girl were still taking off their outdoor clothes. The people in the paintings were jumping up and down, apparently trying to warn them. To no use. They might as well be invisible. If you are surrounded by wonder, you simply stop seeing it. Such a waste.
He couldn't believe how stupid these people were. They lived in a world full of magic, and there were so many things that could hurt them. And yet, they were so bloody unconcerned! Well, if they had seen what he had seen, maybe they would learn. Not that they would have the time for it, now.
The woman turned around, seeing her husband standing against the wall, almost drooling like some other idiot. Her eyes widened.
She didn't have time to react either. Her husband raised his wand, said "Petrificus Totalus!" and she went down, stiff as a board. This time, the girl reacted. She spun around, raising her own wand – she probably wasn't even old enough to use magic unsupervised, but whatever – but he was ahead of her.
"Expelliarmus!"
Her wand went flying. He jumped up and caught it midair in a very impressive display of physical prowess. She stared at him. Then her eyes went to her petrified mother, her Imperiused father. She was scared, and that made his smile widen into a grin.
"Stand still," he said, holding up the two wands. He was fully aware of the man's mind, edging around his. He had it in his hands. Metaphorically speaking.
"Who are you?" she asked. She just looked at him. Stupid little girl. She should try to run. She wouldn't get far, but that would at least be something. Instead she just stood there. He had her father go around her, blocking the path. He didn't really care about the girl; she was just a child, none important, but he couldn't really have her run off either. She eyed her father nervously.
"Dad? What are you doing?"
He could feel some sort of reaction through the emotion bond he held. Not enough to shake off the curse, but maybe enough to try and fight it. The man was clearly affected by hearing his daughter's voice so full of terror.
"Shut it," he said. "He can't hear you. He's under the Imperius curse. I assume your parents told you about the Unforgivable Curses?"
"Are you a Death Eater?" she whispered.
"No!" he snarled. God damn it, why would she ask something like that? He was no bloody Death Eater! What, were they the only ones who had the right to use Unforgivables? "Do I look like a bloody Nazi to you?"
"I don't know what a Nazi is!" she said.
"It doesn't fucking matter!" he hissed. Purebloods! "I said shut it, so you'd better shut it!" Bloody hell. He shouldn't let these things get to him, but they still did. Even after all these years. No. Calm down. You're on a mission.
He did not put down his wand, but the girl didn't move when he walked forward. He looked down on the woman on the floor. She stared up at him, only her eyes moving.
"Hello," he said to her.
Her eyes rolled in fear. He liked that. He liked seeing their fear. It made him feel powerful and gave him the strength to keep going. At nights, when he couldn't sleep, or was awakened by a nightmare, he found comfort in knowing that he was the thing other people feared in the night. It hadn't always been like that, of course, but he tried not to think about those times. Now he had a wand again – no, two wands, at least for the moment, and if that wasn't enough, he had other weapons too. The combination of two worlds. He was the deadliest human being in all of Great Britain, maybe all of Europe, simply because he was smart enough to realize the full potential.
"What did you do during the war?" he asked the woman.
She clearly had not expected that question. No one ever did. For them, maybe it was all passed and gone into history. Ten years will do that to some.
"I know what you did," he said. "You worked at the Ministry. You still do, in fact. Did you have a list back then? Was my name on that list?" She didn't answer. Obviously. Instead, she stared at him.
He ignored her for the time being and looked at her daughter. The girl was crying silently.
"Do you know what your mummy did during the war?" he asked.
"I was only three years when it ended!" she said. "I don't remember anything! Please… please, just let us go!"
"No," he said. Then he looked back at the woman. "I want you to see this," he said. "Okay? Good."
He took a few steps back.
The man raised his wand and shouted, "Avada Kedavra!"
The girl fell.
Without her sobs, the room was very quiet. The people in the paintings raged at him in silence. The woman cried on the floor, tears streaming from her eyes down to her ears and hair. The man stood like a mindless statue in the doorway.
The deadliest, most powerful human being in Great Britain went back and sat down in an armchair.
"My name is Ian Robbins," he told the room. "I'm a Mudblood." With a flick of his wand and a soft "Incendio" he incinerated the paintings. They did not even make a sound as they burned. Sloppy work, sloppy, not even a Protection charm; why did these people feel so ridiculously safe? Had they never been scared or threatened in their life? He assumed they hadn't.
"Accio wand," he said.
The woman's wand, which she had carried in her back pocket, came zooming through the air. He caught it and put it in his lap. Three wands. Three wands and a huge knife; he was well off.
He directed his wand at the woman. "Finite," he said. She started moving on the floor, her sobs wild and desperate. Her first reaction – which should, really, be getting her arse out of here, oh well – was to crawl over to where her daughter laid, sobbing and gasping her name as if that would help.
When she looked up at Ian, her face was wet with tears and twisted with hatred.
"Why did you do this?" she asked, voice shivering.
"Because I want to," he said. "If you would do me the honour." The last words were directed at the man he controlled, who did the honours all right. Ian was powerful with the Imperius Curse. It was his little baby. He could make almost anyone do almost anything.
"Crucio!" the man barked.
The woman fell down in convulsions above her daughter's body, screaming and thrashing like her body was on fire. Ian turned away. He didn't need to look at it; he knew what it looked like. He had had the unpleasant experience of dealing with people who knew how to shake off the Imperius Curse at an instant. Few, but they existed. In their case, he had used the Cruciatus Curse until they were as willing to bid to his wishes as they would have been with the Imperius Curse. It worked, but it took time. He preferred them to do the work for him.
He would end the session by waking them up, just so they would see what they had done. Seeing the realisation dawn on them was almost the best part.
See, so many of them had used that as an excuse. He thought it would be good for them to see what it really meant to be under Imperio.
First when all that was said and done, he would let them die. And after that, he would keep walking ahead, never looking back. Never thinking about it again, about Azkaban, about the Dementors, about that word echoing in his skull ever single second of every single day, Mudblood, Mudblood, Mudblood, filthy, dirty, weak… All quiet, all gone, just falling away.
When they were all dead, maybe he would finally be able to move on.