Author's Note: Shooting fish in a barrel, of course, but these sorts of stories are always satisfying.
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Lupin and Mrs. Weasley darted forward and tried to tug the cur tains shut over the old woman, but they would not close and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though try ing to tear at their faces.
"Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers —"
"OH, SHUT THE HELL UP!"
Harry's temper had not been calmed by his earlier outburst, and a dark part of him savored the opportunity to rip into someone who was not one of his friends. "YOU HEARD ME!" he roared as the woman stopped and gawked at him. "YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DIRT AND VILENESS? HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR MASTER?"
The woman's crazed face contorted in rage anew. "The House of Black has no master, boy! We do-"
"VOLDEMORT!" he bellowed. "OR, SHOULD I SAY, TOM RIDDLE? THE MUTATED, FREAKISH SON OF A MUGGLE? THE THING THAT WRITHED AND SCRAPED IN THE DIRT FOR A DECADE, CLAWING AT EVERY PIGEON AND RODENT THAT -"
Her face had drained of color. Come to think of it, things were awfully silent around him as well. "Tom?" she whispered. "Tom from Slyth-"
She snarled and rallied. "Lies, boy, madness and lies! You have no proof! The Dark Lord -"
"I AM LORD VOLDEMORT!" Gasps around him; he bit back the urge to curse and quickly clarified. "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE! IT'S AN ANAGRAM, YOU STUPID OLD HAG! AN ANAGRAM! REARRANGE THE BLOODY LETTERS!"
Her mouth moved as she began to sound out the letters, and then she shook her head and sneered at him. "Nonsense! How would you know?"
"BECAUSE TOM RIDDLE TOLD ME," he roared, "RIGHT BEFORE I SHOVED A BASILISK FANG THROUGH HIS HEART!" He extended his right arm and pulled up his sleeve, bearing the scar where the fang had gone through his arm. "HE SET SLYTHERIN'S MONSTER ON ME, AND I KILLED IT - AND HIM! A BLOODY TWELVE-YEAR-OLD, WITH NOTHING BUT DUMBLEDORE'S PHOENIX FOR SUPPORT!" His lips peeled back from his teeth. "You know," he said, coughing a little past the rawness of his throat, "he said we were like twins - can you imagine that? Me, the son of a Muggleborn... though I know you'd love to use worse terms... My Muggle aunt - well, uncle's sister - told me my mother was a bitch and I ought to have been drowned at birth... You know, you're the first witch I've met who really reminds me of her - I know you love that, don't you? You remind me of the entire family, really... Most Muggle-like witch I've ever met..."
The old woman looked as though he'd come up to her on the street and begun spewing the liveliest vileness imaginable. Harry wasn't done. "But then," he whispered, leaning in close, "my blood is purer than the Dark Lord's... at least both my parents were your sort... and he was the son of a Muggle, can you imagine that? A Muggle who abandoned his mother because he found out she was a witch... and she died giving birth to him... the last heiress of Slytherin - she had to be, I can't imagine anyone else running around without claiming the title, the way Slytherin is - dying for a Muggle's son..."
She looked half her size; something had gone out of her, and as she sagged back from the portrait's surface, Harry almost felt sorry for her. "You're lying," she said weakly. "The Dark Lord - he can't be Tom, he - I knew Tom Riddle, boy - very talented, but -"
"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son," Harry recited. She stopped dead. "Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master. Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe."
"I've heard..." she said softly, then shook her head. "I never knew of the exact words, but I knew of that rit- Boy, what has that to do with anything?"
She was working herself up into a rage again, obviously to protect herself from the knowledge she had just received; Harry gave her a savage, mirthless smile. He would not let her. "I heard those words at the beginning of this summer," he said, his mouth hurting from the expression into which he had stretched it. He didn't care. "I was the enemy. A foul little rat, one I greatly regret sparing, was the servant. And the father? Why, that dear Muggle, Tom Riddle Senior, whom the Dark Lord acknowledged as his father once he arose. I don't know why your lot didn't object a bit more to hearing that, but - I suppose they didn't have a choice at that point, did they? He was a bit peeved that, thirteen years later, not one of them had lifted a finger to seek him out -"
"The Dark Lord? The Dark Lord acknowledged a Muggle as his father? Before - everyone?"
"Avery. Crabbe. Goyle. Malfoy-"
"Lucius? Dear little Lucius knelt before an acknowledged Muggle's son?"
"Approached him on his knees and kissed his robes," Harry said, something ugly making him smile with genuine glee. In fairness, Voldemort had not yet confessed that he had required his father's bone for the ritual, so perhaps they had not known of his parentage quite yet, or missed the reference, or perhaps hoped that some great and powerful wizard had masqueraded under the name of Tom Riddle... but he did not care...
An anguished cry broke from the woman. "We married Cissy to that - that bootlicker of filth?"
They'd named a girl Sissy? Perhaps that explained a lot about Draco. "I suppose you did," Harry said casually. He shrugged. "I suppose your house was befouled all along, wasn't it?"
She gave a choking sob and drew back further, looking like nothing more than a broken old woman. "Regulus," she croaked. "Regulus." Tears brimmed in her eyes, then began to leak down her face. "My boy - my son, my only good son - my poor little boy - died - for a Muggle's son -"
She let out a great wail, then buried her face in her hands and howled. Harry was torn between his better nature telling him to pity the woman, whatever her personal foulness, and a deep, ugly part of him that would have gloried in seeing a Dursley so broken.
As though in answer to that latter part, slow, soft claps came from behind him. Harry whirled around and found a man with long black hair standing in a doorway, his face expressionless even as his hands moved in applause.
"Congratulations, Harry," said Sirius Black. "I never would have imagined someone could manage to so quickly break my mother."
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Author's Note: Catharsis aside, this has a few implications:
All Order members now know Voldemort is a Muggle's son.
Because Harry couldn't quite resist twisting the knife, they now know his relatives are so foul that he can compare them to Walburga Black without hyperbole. Hopefully this gets one of them worried enough to break from Dumbledore's grand plan.
Assuming Kreacher crept in to overhear the fight, his poor Mistress's anguish might be enough for him to pull Harry aside and talk to him about the Locket. That kicks the Horcrux plot off sooner. Additionally, Kreacher's loyalty is bought by the Locket's destruction, so the Order may lose a major leak during the OOTP year - consequences uncertain, but handwave that saves some poor fool's life. Certainly the Ministry battle needs a different incentive if Harry can check in on Sirius and get an honest answer.
If Snape reports back, Voldemort's blood pressure just rose twenty points. The Inner Circle may have trouble fleeing, but the rank-and-file Death Eaters (or prospective recruits) may defect in response to Harry screaming in everyone's faces "DO YOU KNOW TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, MR. "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT" - TRY IT, IT'S AN ANAGRAM - IS A MUGGLE'S SON?"
Anyway, it's interesting to consider the fallout of Harry snapping and using some of his eclectic collection of plot information for once.