A/N: Is this what working from home looks like?


Chapter 9

Arkham was nothing less than a fortress, and it was an imposing one at that. Everything bad Harry had ever heard about places like Bedlam was realised in the walled compound that grew out of blighted ground like some kind of angular fungus. The first thing that he noticed was tall walls made of bare concrete. There were two concentric sets; all of them were topped with some of the most wickedly barbed wire Harry had ever seen.

There was only one route into the compound. A long, dark, tree-lined road ran straight up to the walls and passed through a huge steel gate manned by no fewer than five men. All of them were armed with stun guns and pistols and truncheons. As Harry ghosted by under his cloak he also noted a locked cabinet that likely contained much heavier weaponry.

Beyond the walls were the actual buildings of Arkham Asylum. They played to the most melodramatic sensibilities of Gotham's architecture in a way that made Harry wonder if it was really best for the patients. Surely waking up to the sight of a snarling gargoyle staring in through your window was not a recipe for quick mental recovery?

Perhaps once it had been a manor-house of some form; it certainly didn't look like it had been originally built to be an institution. Once it must have been grand indeed, but the years and Gotham's wet climate had not been kind to it. Despite obvious regular repair and maintenance, the building looked more like a child's idea of a haunted house than any kind of legitimate medical facility. Dirt and grime caked once white walls. Windows were choked by vines and creepers. In many places the vines had been hacked off at the base in an attempt to stymie their growth.

It had really granted only a temporary reprieve, but it also meant that much of the house was covered in the skeletal remains of those same plants. All in all, looking at the house and hearing the occasional distant scream of anguish issuing from some unseen window, Harry almost started believing in MACUSA's dark curse theory. If it was true then this place was surely at the very centre of it.

He made his way, quiet and unseen beneath his cloak, across the yard in front of the main wing of the Asylum. When he took his first step up the stairs to the main doors he had to suppress a shiver.

There were some places that seemed to soak up the pain and suffering of those who'd passed through their halls. Once, he'd thought it was a quality unique to Azkaban and the Dementors which had once infested it but a trip to the ruins of Nurmengard quickly demonstrated the falseness in that particular belief. Perhaps it was the blood that had been spilled over them, or perhaps it was something altogether darker; the desires that had led to that spilled blood. Whatever it was it had seeped into the stone and into the ground, and stained it in more ways than one.

Even with the Dementors long gone, no-one slept easy on Azkaban island.

Arkham Asylum, it seemed, would be joining the very short list of places that Harry hoped never again to have to set foot in. As one of his Auror recruits had once said of Azkaban: it gave him the willies.

He apparated through the locked doors into what once had been a grand entrance hall. It had clearly seen some significant redesign in recent years and contained one of the least welcoming welcome desks Harry had ever seen. It was contained completely in a metal box with just two little windows, layered with thick perspex and broad metal bars. The whole space was deserted, which only added to the haunted atmosphere of the whole building.

After a couple of abortive attempts to locate his quarry, in which he'd been stymied by the sheer number of people moving around, he'd elected to wait for evening. Most of the staff had gone home for the evening, and the more permanent denizens locked up for the night. That meant it was indeed far easier to move around. It was also significantly more unsettling.

To make him feel a little better he silently conjured the same dark-light he'd used in Gotham Botanic Gardens. With a flick of his hand it rose high towards the ceiling and its light increased until the whole space looked to him like it was bathed in bright sunlight.

Another silent apparition and Harry was inside the secure reception 'desk'. He glanced around, looking for any information that might prove useful.

It was spartan but lived in. He'd already seen just how tight the security around the asylum was and it was obvious that the receptionists were little better than prisoners themselves during work hours. There were two very worn swivel chairs tucked under the desk by two dented computers. The desk was strewn with papers though even a cursory glance told Harry that they were mostly bureaucratic nonsense, and of no use to him.

His eyes came to rest on a small but very sturdy-looking filing cabinet. What were the chances that it contained some patient files, in case visitors wanted information?

He still didn't touch anything though. He'd seen how Neville had been betrayed by a few unlocked doors. There were two cameras watching the room, their little red lights like unblinking eyes.

The easy thing to do would be to disable them, but while he might get away with that once or maybe even twice, it would soon start to arouse suspicion. Fortunately for him, however, it was also possible to confund such devices. He flicked his wand at one camera, then the other, and if anyone was watching their live feed they would be seeing footage from five minutes previously. The red lights winked off.

A quick unlocking charm got him access to the cabinet. He only had a few minutes of freedom to check but he soon came to the realisation that he would not find what he was looking for in the cabinet. One drawer was largely empty. The other was filled with what looked like admission forms and other paperwork.

The only thing of use that he did find was a much-folded and dog-eared map of the asylum. It only had the rooms numbered, and with no names visible. That wasn't much help. He'd have to get into the computer to find anything of value.

He still had a couple of minutes before the cameras started recording again, and one of the machines was already on. It was locked, and required a password to open, but the wonderful thing about magic was that it didn't really care how something was locked.

Another unlocking charm, and he was into the computer. He thanked whatever kind deity may have been listening when the first screen he was greeted with was a patient registry database. He typed Sionis' name into a search bar somewhat laboriously and checked the resulting page.

He'd been committed to the highest security wing due to him exhibiting violent delusions and paranoia. There was a warning note that it was likely, due to the nature of his instability, that he possessed murderous tendencies. A further note also stated that he should be considered extremely intelligent and capable of masterful emotional manipulation during his periods of lucidity.

He sounded just lovely.

With his time nearly up, Harry closed the search and turned the screen back off. It was not a moment too soon, and just as he did so the red lights on the cameras flickered back to life.

The high security wing, according to the map he'd filched, had only one way in or out; a subterranean tunnel that connected to the main building.

With a twist, he silently apparated back out of the reception office and made his way over to a service stairwell. From the look of it, it was used only rarely as there was a thick layer of dust and grime on both the floor and banister. He assumed that most people came and went to the basement levels using the elevator.

When he reached the correct basement level, after double checking his map to make sure he was on the right path, Harry encountered his first guard. On closer inspection, it was actually hard to tell, he supposed it was possible that the man was a nurse, or orderly. He'd never seen a nurse carrying weapons before, but who knew what counted for normal in such a benighted place.

Unlike the atrium the basement level was well lit and filled with the quiet buzzing of ageing strip lights. The orderly looked relaxed as he walked down the corridor. Sometimes it was amazing just what people could get used to. Harry checked the map and guessed that he was probably on the way to the break room.

Harry headed in the opposite direction and, after a short journey down a few more identical featureless corridors, he came to a door that looked more like it belonged in a bank than any kind of mental institution. Two men, armed similarly to the men he'd seen at the front gate, guarded it with stoic expressions. A slim, blonde haired woman in a white-coat was chatting to one of them very conversationally, but not getting much in return.

"Geeze, Mr. K," she said in obvious frustration, after clearly not getting very far in her attempts to win the two men over. "Can't ya let a girl have some excitement in her life?"

"Believe me, you don't want that kind of excitement, Harleen," said the man she'd been talking to. Unless Harry was mistaken, there was a little bit of fatherly affection there. "You know the rules. Finish your degree, then you can have your pick of the crazies."

Despite the guard's attempt to be reasonable, she threw up her arms dramatically, and stomped off, right past Harry. As she flounced by, and never had Harry before seen a gait more suited to being described by that word, she paused for a moment to offer a parting shot. "You shouldn't call them crazies, ya know?"

The two guards just chuckled, which apparently simply frustrated her further. She huffed, spun on her heel and quickly rounded the corner without looking back.

"She has no idea," said the guard who up until that moment hadn't spoken a word in Harry's hearing.

"She'll learn," said the first guard with a fond smile, though Harry thought his words sounded worryingly ominous.

Setting aside his concerns over just how crazy Arkham's crazies really were, he apparated the short distance through the security door. The other side looked very similar to where he had just come from, even down to two more almost identical-looking guards. The access corridor to the high security wing had clearly not been so carefully constructed as the basement levels he'd just been in. The concrete walls were cracked and spalled in places and there was the ever-present sound of dripping. The lighting in the tunnel was more sparse than it had been before. Instead of the overhead strip-lights there were flickering orange hued lights embedded along the bottom of the wall, where it met the floor. They cast deep shadows over the pitted and uneven floor. On a couple of occasions, Harry had to stop himself from stepping in puddles of standing water, partially concealed by the shadows.

At the far end of the tunnel was another huge door and another set of guards who were quickly bypassed. Harry then made his way into the residence portion of the high-security wing.

Once again, he found himself being reminded of Azkaban and Nurmengard. The only difference was where they were dark and poorly lit, the halls of Arkham were almost dazzlingly bright. Dark tiles, scratched, cracked, and deeply worn covered the floor, while the walls were clad in newer-looking white tiling. Every few meters the walls were punctuated by the bare metal of heavy doors. Each door had a small hatch at eye-height and another at floor level. None had any holes for keys, nor even so much as a doorknob or handle.

As Harry moved silently down the corridor towards the room which had been assigned to Sionis, he peered in through a few of the open hatches.

Most of the rooms contained ordinary looking people, though there were one or two oddities. One patient had covered the walls of his room with writing and symbols. Harry couldn't understand what it was all about, but there were a great number of question marks of different sizes scattered around the scrawlings. Another room contained a man who'd clearly been in some kind of horrific accident, half his face burned and peeling. He was staring unblinking at a large coin which he was flipping over repeatedly in his hands.

The last room Harry looked into before he reached Sionis' cell contained a red-headed woman with a very strange green pallor to her skin. As he passed her by, he could hear her humming as she stroked the leaves of a small, leafy plant. He stopped for a moment and peered in, he recognised her from some of the newspapers he'd read after finding out that it was her plant that Neville had taken. She was Poison Ivy.

He took a mental note to return to her cell once he was done with Sionis. She'd been locked up since before Neville had gone missing, but that didn't mean she knew nothing about whatever might have happened. He continued walking.

At last, he reached his destination. He looked through the little window into the room beyond to see Sionis perched on the edge of his bed and staring into space. Unlike many of the other rooms there was no sign of any attempt at personalization. The good news was that it didn't look like there were any cameras in the cells themselves. A strange decision, but one that Harry appreciated. It made his life much easier.

Harry cast a muggle repelling charm on the outside of the door before apparating inside. It wouldn't do for someone to walk in on him while he was interrogating Sionis. After a moment's thought, he included a secrecy charm. The walls might be thick, but he didn't want to risk the chance that the other inmates might be able to overhear their conversation.

He closed the grate on the door, which prompted Sionis' head to whip around to stare at the source of the noise. Not one to take any chances, Harry cast a silent body-bind on Sionis before at last removing the invisibility cloak.

There was really only one way he'd be able to get information out of a crazed gang enforcer. Intimidation.

"Now," he began in a low, threatening voice. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to give me answers. I'm pretty tired of this whole run-around, and this place isn't helping my good mood, so I suggest you answer quickly and succinctly, understand?"

With a flick of one hand, he released Sionis' head from the body bind. Despite his newfound freedom, he still did not move. His dark, shuttered eyes simply stayed fixed on Harry, unblinking.

Those eyes were all too familiar to Harry. That closed off look? They were the eyes of one who knew themselves to stand apart from all others. A person who saw other people as nothing more than particularly intriguing animals, and animals as little more than toys to be used and abused for their own amusement. They were closed to the world outside because, to them, the whole world was the one inside their own head. The world beyond was more like a game; the people, mere actors.

They were the eyes of the very worst kind of psychopath.

Finally, he spoke. "Well, now. Why should I tell you anything?" Where Harry had been expecting to find the raving lunatic Zatanna had described from the news reports, instead he found him to be exceptionally well-spoken.

Sionis continued, "I am not an unreasonable man, no matter what my gaolers might say. I am not saying I will not tell you anything, merely that nothing in this world comes for free. So what will you offer me for this information?"

"How about you give me the information, and I give you the gift of unbroken fingers?" said Harry as he prowled back and forth twirling his wand. The man put him on edge. Hell, all of Arkham put him on edge.

The threat fell on deaf ears, though. Sionis merely chuckled in response. "Come now, mysterious intruder. Do you think that I, of all people, do not recognise a mask when I see it? I have played this game a thousand times from your side. If you were truly capable of using violence to get me to talk, you wouldn't have made threats. I never did. I grew up surrounded by masks. You cannot fool me. So I ask again: what will you offer in equal exchange?"

Fuck. And what made it worse was that the man was right. There were lines which Harry would never cross. He'd seen the world beyond that line, and he didn't like it one bit. Maybe he could deal, though. He felt no need to uphold his end of the bargain with a murderer and self-confessed torturer.

"Tell me who Black Mask is, and where I can find him and perhaps we can come to an arrangement," he said eventually.

"You still think you can hide behind masks?" said Sionis, shaking his head as if dealing with an errant child. "But perhaps I can be magnanimous. A free sample, if you will.

"The Black Mask is me or, rather, the Black Mask is what the world sees when I reveal my true face to them, shorn of this… tiresome facade." He paused for a moment before smiling. "As for where the Black Mask may be found? Well, here I am."

That didn't add up. Sionis had been incarcerated during both of the attacks on Harry himself. "If you are the Black Mask then who's leading the False Facers now?"

"You get only one free sample," said Sionis evenly. "I would not be much of a businessman if I simply gave away my most valuable commodity."

"Who says you'd be giving it away for free?" said Harry, as an idea occurred to him. "Your men have betrayed you, abandoned you to this place. Why protect them?"

That got something more than the previous amused disdain. For just a fraction of a second, there was a tightness to his face, and anger flashed in his eyes. "Nothing more than a trick, they are mine. It was I that revealed to them the true face of the world, and it was me who showed them the freedom of finding their own. I own them!"

"And yet here you are, locked up in a tiny cell while they are still out there, carrying on as if the loss of your leadership means nothing," said Harry. He'd found a weak point in the man's defenses, now he just needed to poke at it until they broke down completely. "Perhaps it does mean nothing. They seem to be doing well for themselves."

The anger flashed across his features again, less well concealed this time. "You have no idea! Before I found them, they were lost. Together we will free you all from your self-imposed tyranny. No imposter can stand in the way of my destiny as it was revealed. My Society will be saviors, and I will be their messiah."

"Seems they got bored of their messiah," Harry needled. "Or maybe they got sick of your small-minded attacks on random citizens? Where's the big statement, huh?"

Despite the body-bind, Sionis was vibrating with indignation. "It was stolen from me! It was mine! And they took it. The Ivy bitch cooked it up, but it was my dream! Me! No-one else's. Wayne believes he owns the world, but he doesn't own this. He stole it. It would have been beautiful, like waking the world from a dream. I could have revealed to all the lies in which everyone traps themselves. Choice, freedom, morality. All lies. Masks we wear to hide what we truly are."

Something in the tirade rang a bell with Harry, but it took a moment for him to realise just what it was. Dreams. The Venomous Tentacula had been spliced, somehow, with Madagascan Dream Grass.

He decided to take a stab in the dark. "A bush? That was your great destiny? No wonder your cultists abandoned you. I'm sure your replacement had some much better ideas."

"A bush? A bush! It was no mere bush. It was my destiny, it was yours. It would have freed the world! It said so!" His eyes rolled about in his gaunt face as he ranted and raved, sending his spit flying through the air. "The false one, the Child of Tears. He has no destiny; he was not written in truth. Lies, lies! He wishes to cleanse, but he does not understand. Not yet."

Then, quite suddenly, Sionis took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When they reopened the rage was gone, buried deep and hidden once again behind those dark shutters. "He will understand, though. He will see the truth, if he has not already seen it."

He tilted his head and stared at Harry, unblinking. "I did not see it before, but now I do. I see you, I see your true face. You are a Child of Tears too. You should rejoice, for the ascendancy of your empire is soon."

Harry started to feel an uneasy sensation churning in the pit of his stomach. There was something about what the man was saying that was not your run-of-the-mill insanity. Or perhaps it was just that Arkham was getting to him. Child of Tears, though? He pulled out the picture of Neville and held it in front of Sionis. "What did you do to this man?"

The manic laughter that began to trickle from the man soon grew into a torrent, and it would not abate. Harry silenced him, but his laughter did not even slow. Even stunning him and reviving him did not help, as soon as his consciousness returned, the giggling soon followed and in a few seconds, he was roaring once again with unrestrained laughter.

The urge to punch the man was rapidly growing, but he knew it wouldn't achieve anything. The man was completely insane, and would likely find it to be a source of further hilarity. Instead, he closed his eyes, and apologised to his past and future self for what he was about to do.

"Legilimens!"

He hated legilimency with a passion. Ever since those lessons half a lifetime ago in the office of Severus Snape. It was a violation of the most fundamental kind when done without permission which Harry tried to avoid at all costs. By its very nature it tended to blur the line that separated your inner self from everyone else. Both the caster and the victim saw that line scrubbed out for a few brief seconds. When it returned it was just a little out of shape, and who knew what unseen dark thoughts had crept through the momentary breach?

A trained legilimens could reduce that flow, but it could never be truly stopped as so much of the self was tied up in memory. A man with a dislike of dogs might trace that feeling to a singular point in time, and the memory it created. If a legilimens was to view that memory they too would feel what that man had felt, if perhaps only as an echo. Echoes could last a long time indeed in the dark, hidden spaces of the human mind.

It would not instill within them the same hatred of dogs that it had created in the one who originally experienced it, but it might just give them pause. The next time they encountered a dog the echo of that experience would be heard, and it would at least give them pause. The memory of their victim continued to live in the memories of the legilimens, and the human mind is not familiar with the concept that it can contain memories that are not its own.

Harry valued the sanctity of his own mind, and his own memories. Polluting them with the warped dreams of a mad-man was nothing less than repugnant. But his friend was in danger, and he needed something to go on. Anything.

His consciousness plunged into the chaotic whirlpool of Roman Sionis' memories. In less than a second he'd glimpsed a million moments, all jumbled up together. Each more fleeting than a mayfly, and as slippery as an eel. There was a fire. Unreadable symbols like raindrops, glowing in darkness. A gruesome murder. Masks, so many masks. A ruined coffin. Then, for the briefest of moments, there was Neville, looking angry, but before Harry could grasp the memory, it was gone again and Harry was cast adrift once more.

More masks. A beautiful woman with a painted face. A dark room filled with throbbing music. A man, his face skinned. The woman from before, but her face was burned off. A raccoon. Another woman, the green one from the other cell. Neville, standing above him holding a mask. Blackness, and distant chittering laughter. A dark shade in the shape of a Bat, looming over a city of shadows.

Suddenly Harry found himself back in his own body, disoriented and swaying. He reached out with a hand to steady himself on the wall until the world stopped spinning. He soon realised why he'd been expelled. Sionis, still sitting upright thanks to the body bind, was completely unconscious.

A quick spell confirmed that he was still alive, which caused Harry to sigh in relief. He sat down on the end of the narrow, knobbly bed and dropped his head into his palms.

That had been exactly as bad as he'd thought it would be. Delving into the memories of a mass-murderer and psychopath was never going to be a ticket to happy town, but at least his mental state was so fractured that he hadn't been able to catch more than the briefest flashes. He'd seen Neville, but again it had looked like he was in control of the situation. What had happened since Sionis had been hauled in to Arkham? Was it Neville that had captured him? Everyone seemed to have assumed that it was the Batman, but there was that memory of Neville holding an ebony mask...

It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. What had happened to Sionis' mind that had caused him to go so completely mad? In the memories Harry had seen the man was cruel, vain, and manipulative, yes, but there had always been some method there, some strategy that could be served.

Was it the Tentacula hybrid that had done it? He still hadn't sent it along to Padma for the Unspeakables to investigate. Perhaps he should. He was beginning to feel uneasy about having it so close. Was it possible that the Dream Grass had influenced Sionis' mind?

He would need to wait to hear from the Unspeakables to know if that was possible, but even if it was it didn't get him any closer to knowing what had happened to Neville. He punched the bed in frustration. It felt like he'd exhausted every avenue. Eventually he stood up. It was long past time he left, but before he did perhaps he should try asking the green-skinned woman some questions too.

Before he left, he made sure to obliviate anything untoward from the mind of Sionis, and spelled the shutter back open. It wouldn't do for someone to notice those small incongruities. With his invisibility cloak back on, and his silencing charms reapplied, he apparated back out into the corridor to remove the muggle repelling charm on the door.

He moved back along the corridor towards the cell which he presumed belonged to the woman referred to by the news as Poison Ivy. Before he got there, though, all the lights in the corridor went out, and he was plunged into absolute darkness.

Before he'd even begun the spell to create his hidden mage-light he was nearly blinded when the lights flared back into life, far brighter than before. He had to stop and blink spots from his eyes, but when he was able to see properly again he was met by a very strange sight.

The corridor that had previously been empty no longer was. Now it was occupied by a man dressed all in black. He was wearing a face-mask with short pointed ears, and much of his body was concealed beneath a long flowing cape which fanned out across the floor behind him like a shadow. On his chest, partially hidden behind the cape, was a stylised bat symbol.

It was the Batman.