Hyde
Draco
The first time it happened, I was there.
In fact, I was the one who angered him enough for it to happen.
It was another typical day at Grimmauld Place, a day where the Order was out, fighting the Death Eaters when they attacked the Muggle houses, and I was once again stuck alone with Potter.
After I had joined the side of the Light, they had decided it was too dangerous for me to be out in the field, and had stuck me in Grimmauld Place. "For my own safety", they said.
Some days, I'm not sure if it was my own safety or theirs that they feared for. I had already renounced the Dark, did they really think I would go back to the Dark Lord?
Anyhow, Potter was stuck at Grimmauld Place "for his own safety" as well, and thus it was that on this fateful day, we were both alone together.
In my own defence, I was bored. We had been stuck together at Grimmauld Place for a few days now, and I needed some entertainment to keep myself from going spare.
Potter, Weasley, Granger and I got on quite civilly these days: one might even call us friends. But annoying Potter would never get old, no matter how close we might be.
What better entertainment for now than to annoy Potter?
So I approached him as he sat at the kitchen table, quietly reading a book, and started to needle him.
"I think they were all wrong when they said you were their Saviour, weren't they? A true Saviour would be out there fighting along his friends, not sitting here and letting them die."
Potter ignore me, so I needled him some more.
"If you hadn't been so cowardly, maybe your godfather wouldn't have died. I heard he died because of you. Is that true?"
Potter continued to say nothing, so I continued to poke at him some more.
"Poor, poor Potter. Whatever will you do if all your friends die?"
In retrospect, I should have seen it before it was coming. The signs were all there.
Potter started shaking uncontrollably, as if trying to restrain himself from getting angry and attacking me, and I smirked as I placed the final blow.
"Once they all die like your parents did, you'll have no one left, Potter. And it'll be all your fault."
He finally turned to glare at me, and I could clearly see the moment when his eyes shifted from its usual brilliant green to a slits of deep red. I sucked in a breath. Those eyes...they almost reminded me of the Dark Lord.
When Potter started speaking, it wasn't with his own voice. His voice had changed, deep and cruel, and that threw me off so badly that I almost couldn't catch his words at first.
"Poor, poor Malfoy. You laugh at me for being all alone, but you are all alone too. Don't you see that? It's okay, Malfoy. I'll alleviate your pain. After this, you'll never have to be alone again."
I backed myself up against the table, trying desperately to escape, but Potter kept walking closer, kept getting nearer and nearer, and I wanted to scream as I looked at his face. Potter never looked like that when he was angry, he'd never looked like that in all the years I'd known him at all. He smiled at me sinisterly, a sadistic gleam in his blood red eyes, and I could feel my breathing start to speed up.
"P-Potter, w-what are you doing?" I wanted my voice to come out low and warning, but it came out high and reedy instead.
"Alleviating your loneliness, Malfoy. I'm doing you a favour, you know." He smiled again, baring all his teeth in a sadistic gleam.
"Incarcerous!" Thick ropes appeared, binding my hands and legs to the table, and this time I really did scream. There was no way out now.
"Crucio!" Potter growled, and my whole body jerked as I screamed in pain. Dimly, I heard Potter cast curse after curse at me, a stream of Crucios and Sectumsempras, in between peals of manic laughter. My vision darkened, and the only thing I knew, the only thing I could feel, was pain. As the torture went on and on, I dimly registered a thick liquid trickling down my body, and forced my eyes opened to see that it was blood. My blood was draining out of my body rapidly, and there was nothing I could do about it.
When oblivion came, it was welcome, and the last thing I saw before I finally blacked out were a pair of red eyes.
They say that later on, the Order arrived back at Grimmauld Place to see me on the ground, still tied to the table, unconscious and lying in a pool of my own blood. One of my arms lay a few feet away from the rest of my body. Potter knelt over my prone body, sobbing uncontrollably, casting futile healing charm after healing charm.
When he looked at them, his eyes were green.
Ron
The second time it happened, I was there.
Everyone was a bit scared of Harry after Malfoy's attack. Who wouldn't be? Malfoy had been in pretty bad shape when we returned, and the thought of it still made me nauseous when I thought of it. Tied to the table, lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes empty as they stared up at the ceiling, a dozen deep cuts all around his body, and Harry kneeling just beside Malfoy, crying. Malfoy's arm had been a few feet away from him, lying innocently on the ground.
Malfoy had been in St. Mungo's for days after the attack.
It had been Harry who attacked Malfoy. That part was clear, no matter how many times Harry and even Malfoy tried to say otherwise. There had only been two of them in the house, two former schoolboy rivals, and Harry had already cut Malfoy open once before. It was highly likely he would do it again if he got angry enough.
But I had never expected my best mate to be so cruel.
We were in my room together a few weeks after the attack. Harry was lying on his stomach, flipping through a Quidditch magazine, while I stared at the ceiling, trying my best to forget the fact that my best friend, who was right beside me now, had almost killed another human being. Finally, I couldn't bear it any longer, so I sat up and asked him the question that had been bugging me for days.
"Harry? Why exactly did you attack Malfoy that day?" I asked as casually as I could, staring at the wall in front of me.
Harry sighed. "For the last time, it wasn't me, Ron!" The words had started off at a normal volume, but it ended in a shout. Merlin, Harry's temper was short nowadays.
"There were only two of you at home that day! If it wasn't you, who was it?" I replied.
When there was no answer, I turned to look at Harry. He was trembling, shaking violently, and his hands covered his face.
"Mate? You alright?" I asked. I had no idea what to do if Harry cried.
Thinking back, maybe I should have listened to Malfoy better when he described how Harry, or not-Harry, had attacked him. We all should have. The signs were clear, and if I had listened, I would have been able to tell. But we had thought he was delirious when he started talking about the Dark Lord's red eyes, so we had simply ignored him and told him to rest.
We should have listened.
Harry glanced up at me, and I saw the moment his eyes turned red. Red, like Vol-Vol- He Who Must Not Be Named. He grinned at me, and though I had seen many terrifying things in the past few years, being the best friend of the Boy Who Lived, to see such a cruel and sadistic expression on my best friend's face was still the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen.
I understood what Malfoy meant now when he said that it wasn't Harry who attacked him.
Whoever the person standing in front of me was, it wasn't Harry.
"Mate?" I asked weakly, my voice coming out in a squeak.
"Hello, Ronald." When he spoke, his voice had changed, low and...and growly, and I sucked in a breath in shock.
"You didn't believe Harry when he told you he wasn't the one who attacked Malfoy, did you? You wanted to know who did it, didn't you? Well, now you'll know." Harry was still grinning madly as he said those words, walking closer and closer as I backed away. I whimpered when I felt the cool stone of the wall behind me. I was doomed.
"Come now, mate, I'm your best friend! Surely you can't be scared of me?" The-person-who-was-not-Harry asked, and the words were terrifying when spoken in that voice, with that grin still on his face. On my best friend's face.
I finally gathered enough courage to answer, though my voice still trembled embarrassingly. "No, you're not. Harry is my best friend, not you! You're a monster!"
Not-Harry shook his head, red eyes glinting. "Ah, Ronald, but I am Harry. I am Harry, and Harry is me. We are simply two sides of the same coin. I am the dark to his light, the evil to his good, and yet though we are different, we are also one and the same. What did Sirius say again? Ah, yes. "We've all got both good and bad inside us", I believe. Harry is the good, and I am the bad. Do you understand now?" He asked sweetly, which only served to terrify me more.
"Yes." I whispered, and Not-Harry tilted his head, as if observing an interesting-looking insect.
"No, I see you don't. It's alright. Let me show you." Harry raised his wand, smiling like a predator about to devour his prey, and I screamed.
"Crucio!" Not-Harry hissed, and I fell to the floor.
Harry cast curse after curse at me as I lay on the floor screaming, and I felt as if my insides were being torn from inside my body. I opened eyes I hadn't even known I'd closed a crack, and my scream got louder as I saw my...was that my stomach?...lying on the floor in front of me. I hadn't even known such pain, such fear, even existed, and I screamed and screamed until my throat felt raw and I passed out from the pain. Through it all, I heard the most terrifying noise of all: Not-Harry laughing manically in Harry's voice, the laughter echoing in my ears.
They say that it was my screams that had drawn the rest of the Order into the room. When Remus blasted open the door, Not-Harry still stood over me, wand pointing straight at me, laughing and laughing and laughing before turning to look at the Order.
His eyes were red.
Hermione
The third time it happened, I was there.
After the attack on Ron, where the Order finally got to see for themselves how Harry's eyes had turned red, they had started to research frantically about what exactly had happened to Harry.
Everyone was terrified of him now. I just couldn't forget how prone Malfoy had looked, or how we'd all thought Ron was dead, blood flowing out from a giant hole in his body, where it pooled around something that had looked suspiciously like his stomach.
Molly had cried for days after the incident.
For his part, Harry was horrified when his eyes turned green again and saw Ron lying on the floor. He had shaken his head in disbelief, tears falling from his eyes as he screamed, and had run away and locked himself in his room.
He still hasn't come out since.
When Dumbledore heard, he and Snape came sweeping into Grimmauld Place, demanding to speak to Harry, and when they emerged from Harry's room a few hours later, they were both cut and bleeding in various places. A few healing charms later, and we were all seated around the fire, listening as Dumbledore told us about the unintentional Horcrux that was inside Harry, and how that caused his own soul to be trapped inside his own mind whenever the piece of Voldemort's soul that was inside him took over.
"It's almost like Jekyll and Hyde." I breathed, and the Order turned to look at me in confusion. Sighing, I told them the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and when I had finished, I turned to look at Dumbledore.
"So the Horcrux inside Harry has caused his split personality?" I asked.
Dumbledore nodded, before turning stern blue eyes onto the rest of us. "Bear in mind, though, that when the Horcrux is not in control, Harry is the same Harry he has always been. Though it's been tough for us, it's been even tougher for him...his soul is simply locked up, not non-existent, so he is aware of his actions while the Horcrux is in control. He is forced to watch as his own body tortures another person, unable to rescue them or help them. I can't imagine the kind of self-guilt he feels right now."
I gasped. Before Dumbledore had talked to us, I hadn't really thought of it that way, and I resolved to talk to Harry and cheer him up as soon as I could.
After dinner, I walked up to Harry's room and knocked on the door, only to be greeted by a muffled "Go away" coming from the room. Undeterred, I kept knocking on the door until Harry opened it, scowling in annoyance.
"Go away, Hermione." He said, before trying to close the door in my face.
I pushed past him into the room, determined to talk to him.
He sighed. "Look. I've already injured, no, nearly killed, Ron and Malfoy. I don't want to hurt anyone else, okay? Leave me alone, and you'll be safe,"
I shook my head. "That wasn't you, Harry. That was Hyde."
"Hyde?" Harry looked at me in confusion.
"I told the rest of the order the story of Jekyll and Hyde, and that's what we've started calling the Horcrux." I answered.
Harry sighed again, using his hands to cover his face. "Look, I don't care what you call it, it's dangerous. Just get out, Hermione."
"No. I'm staying right here. You've been locked up alone here for days, Harry. That can't be healthy." I insisted.
Harry started to shudder all of a sudden, and my breath caught in my throat. That's what both Ron and Malfoy had described happening to Harry before Hyde had taken over. I started inching over to the door, and my hand was on the handle just as Harry started to laugh.
He laughed and laughed, in a voice that wasn't his own, and then he looked up at me with eyes as red as blood. "Oh, Hermione. Harry's sharing a body with a madman. What makes you think he's healthy?"
I opened the door and ran.
I hadn't gotten very far before I heard Hyde's voice snarl "Accio Hermione!", and with a scream, I found myself flying back into the room to land at Hyde's feet.
Hyde pulled me up roughly to face him, and I shuddered as I found myself looking into the blood red eyes of a lunatic and the contorted, smiling face of my best friend.
"Harry, please, I know you're in there. Please, listen to me and let me go, Harry, please!" I pleaded desperately, searching Hyde's face for any sign that my best friend might still be in there, looking into the blood red eyes for any signs of green.
The person in front of me laughed again, and I knew without a doubt that wherever Harry was, he would not be coming out soon. "Oh, Hermione. You just don't understand, do you? I am Harry, and Harry is me. You can't ask for Harry to come out just like that, you know. You can't plead with Harry to let you go, you have to plead with me. Harry's trapped inside me, and there's absolutely nothing he can do for you now. Do you understand?"
I nodded frantically, memories of Malfoy and Ron's bloodied bodies flashing through my mind. I didn't want to end up like them. I didn't want to die.
"I don't think you do. Let me show you, Hermione." Hyde dropped me onto the floor, and I scrambled away as quickly as I could towards the door.
I hadn't gotten very far before I heard Hyde snarl "Crucio!", and I screamed as pain overwhelmed my whole body. Hyde shot curse after curse at me, and I screamed even more as I felt every bone in my body shatter to pieces.
As I slipped gratefully into darkness, Hyde's laughter echoed around the room, following me into unconsciousness.
They say later that when the Order burst into the room, it was to find Harry sobbing over my prone body, shooting healing spell after healing spell at my boneless body.
As he turned to them for help, his eyes were green.
Draco
The fourth time it happened, all of us were there.
I had just gotten out of the hospital when they rushed Weasley's body in, and I felt sickened as I saw the damage Potter had done. Less than a week later, it was Granger being brought in, Weasley crying behind her, and I gasped when I saw her body. Potter had shattered every single bone in her body, crushed it into powder, and her eyes stared unseeingly up at the ceiling.
They told me that the red-eyed monstrosity wasn't Potter. It was a piece of the Dark Lord's soul lodged inside Potter by accident, causing him to act like he did. Apparently, they called him Hyde.
I found that explanation easier to believe than a story where Potter had really attacked me. Potter and I had become friends, and I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't hurt a friend, or even an enemy, the way he had hurt me. Besides, Weasley and Granger were his friends too, and I could never imagine Potter hurting them.
No, the idea that it had been Voldemort's soul, not Harry, who had attacked me was more believable.
Nothing more happened a few weeks after the attack, so we decided to ask Potter to come out of his room and join us for meals. It took a few more days before we successfully managed to coax Potter out of his room, and by then he looked a fright. He was shockingly thin after a few weeks with little food, and the bags under his bloodshot eyes showed that he had been crying a lot.
We sat in at the table, eating our meal quietly. Weasley, Granger and I remained the most silent of all, because how were you supposed to talk to someone whose body had been used to attack you?
The silence was broken by Potter's sudden shout, and we turned to see him shivering violently, face in his hands. He looked up at us with frightened green eyes. "He's coming. Run."
Instantly, our wands were out and yells of "Protego!" filled the air. We watched in horror as Potter shuddered once more, before his eyes turned red and he grinned.
Hyde was here.
"You shouldn't be scared, my dears. I'm your friend, your Saviour. Aren't I?" He chuckled menacingly as he walked nearer, and I heard Mrs Weasley whimper behind me.
"Harry. Stop." Lupin said, his pleasant voice hiding a note of warning, and Hyde turned to look at him, shaking his head slowly.
"All of you just don't understand. You can't get to Harry that way. He's trapped inside me, unable to do anything." He cocked his head to the side, as if listening for something. "He's screaming now. Do you know that? He's screaming for me to stop, begging me not to hurt you, pleading with me to let him go." Hyde laughed again, and looked at us with Potter's face. "Too bad, Harry. No can do." Hyde started laughing even harder at his own words, and I felt my guts twist at the laugh.
"Stop." Lupin repeated, and this time his voice was firm.
Hyde's laughter stopped immediately, but his smile remained. "I do love a bit of fun, do you? You see, when I torture any one of you, you only hear one scream, but I hear two. I hear your scream, and I hear poor Harry screaming inside my head. Isn't that nice?" Hyde's eyes gleamed, and before I knew it, his wand was out and pointing at Lupin.
Lupin clutched at his face, screaming, but not before I saw that his eyes were gone, replaced by two bloody holes in his face.
"You sick bastard!" I heard Weasley growl beside me, and suddenly, Hyde's eyes flickered, before returning back to green.
Potter glanced at Lupin, still on the floor, and shook his head frantically. "No! No, no, no no no, not again, no, no!" He screamed, before his face twisted in anger. "That's it! I've had enough! I'm going to make sure you never hurt me or anyone else ever again, and if I die in the attempt then so be it!" Potter roared, before turning on the spot and Disapparating.
I stared in shock at the place Potter had stood in a few seconds ago, then a painful moan from Lupin caused us to return our attention to him.
In the midst of all the chaos, I realised that I had grown to be worried about Potter some time during the last few weeks, and we now had the small problem of having a possible madman running around London with him.
Oh, dear.
Ron
After Lupin was rushed to St. Mungo' s, our next urgent task was to look for Harry.
That was interrupted, however, by McGonagall's Patronus.
"Attack at Hogsmeade. Come immediately." McGonagall's voice echoed in the room as her Patronus faded, and I turned to look at Mum.
"Mum, we have to find Harry!" I protested, and Mum sighed.
"I know, dear, but Harry can take care of himself. Now, we have to keep the people of Hogsmeade safe. It's our duty as the Order." Mum said gently.
Despite the fact that I nearly bursting with worry about Harry, I nodded. After all, that was what Harry would want us to do: save the lives of the people who were definitely in danger, before looking for him.
All of us, even Malfoy, Apparated to Hogsmeade to see people running everywhere, terror on their faces. The floor was red with blood, and some bodies lay unmoving on the ground. Most conspicuous of all was the absence of the Dark Mark, and I frowned. Surely the Death Eaters would have put their sign high in the air for all to see, to announce their arrival? Another thing that was obvious was the absence of the Death Eaters themselves. Didn't McGonagall call us here for a Death Eater attack? Where were the Death Eaters?
As I walked, I nearly stepped on a fallen body, and I looked down to see someone lying in a pool of blood, their intestines hanging from a hole in their body. Bile rose in my throat as I realised this must have been what I looked like the day Hyde attacked me, and I tugged at Hermione's sleeve to slow her down, pointing towards the body on the ground.
"Hermione, I don't think this is the work of Death Eaters." I whispered.
She wasn't looking at me, but was instead staring at something straight ahead. I followed her gaze and groaned.
Sure enough, Hyde stood at the end of the street, head thrown back in laughter. He was too far away for me to see him clearly, but as I watched, he seemed to shake himself, before screaming and collapsing to the ground.
Hermione and I rushed over towards Harry, Malfoy right behind us, and we stopped just in front of Harry's shaking form.
He looked up at us, green eyes wet with tears, and gave a huge sob. "I tried to fight him, I really did. But he just took over, and there was nothing I could do..." He trailed off, and Hermione hugged him.
"It's okay, Harry. It wasn't you." She said softly.
Harry shook his head. "I tried to kill him, but I couldn't. As soon as the thought of killing him crossed my mind, he took over, and..."
"Wait. Won't killing him mean killing you too?" I asked sharply, and Harry turned to look at me.
"It's the only way, Ron." He answered softly, and I felt my world turn upside down.
"No! You can't!" This time, it was Malfoy who had spoken, and we all turned to stare at him in surprise.
Harry, however, seems to brighten up at the sight of Malfoy, and he passed Malfoy his wand.
"Malfoy, you hate me, right? Kill me, please." Harry begged, and my heart broke at the request.
Malfoy shook his head, and were those...tears I saw in his eyes? "I won't do it, Potter. I won't." He insisted, and his voice came out sounded choked with emotion.
Harry seemed to wilt in front of our eyes, before he suddenly sat up again. "If you won't do it, I know someone who hates me enough to." Without any warning, he Disapparated away, and all we could do was stare at the spot he had been sitting on.
He was gone.
Hermione
The battle raged all around us, and I watched as Death Eaters and students of Hogwarts alike fell around me. Voldemort stood to one side, smirking at the scene in front of him, and I struggled to reach him.
I wanted to defeat him. For Harry.
After that disappearance a few months ago, Harry had not returned, and we'd all long given up hope that he was still alive. Surprisingly, even Malfoy had seemed saddened by Harry's death, though he simply shook his head when we stared at him.
Even now, we could swear we felt his presence with us sometimes. We could hear his laughter carrying on the wind whenever we told a joke, and once Ron had even thought he'd heard Harry calling his name.
We all missed him.
Now, I stared into the face of the man who had caused the death of my best friend, and I shook with anger as I remembered how Harry had been taken away from us long before he even managed to live a proper life. Raising my wand, I pointed it straight at Voldemort, and used an Unforgivable for the first time in my life.
"Avada Kedavra."
I was surprised to hear a voice, a familiar voice, echo my own, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw another jet of green emerge from somewhere behind me and hit Voldemort squarely in the chest, joining my own. As Voldemort fell, I turned around in surprise. I wasn't sure if I was mistaken, but that voice had sounded a lot like...
"Harry?" I whispered.
Harry Potter stood behind me, alive and well. Smudges of dirt covered his face, and his green eyes shone as he smiled.
"Hermione." He answered, grinning.
I ran to him and gave him a hug.
Draco
Later, Harry would tell us how he had gone to Voldemort, and how Voldemort had killed him. He would tell us how he had to lay low for a while (I had to stay dead, didn't I?), and how it had killed him to remain under the cloak, unable to say anything, while the rest of us mourned his death. He would tell us about the guilt he felt when he attacked Ron, Hermione, Remus and I, how he was stuck inside his own mind, unable to do anything but watch as he tortured us, and how a little bit of his soul died each time he heard us scream in agony.
But his eyes remained green throughout, and his face remained wonderfully Harry, and we would know, without a doubt, that Hyde was gone forever.
He had died with Voldemort, and we had our Harry back.
Fin.