I own nothing. Least of all this.

19) DC VILLAINS

Fic Title: "All The Best People Are Crazy"

Accompanying Song: "Mad Hatter" by Melanie Martinez

"NOOOOOO!"

Harry's scream barely registered to Remus. He was too busy doing his best to hold the boy back, to keep him from following his godfather into…whatever that was.

A single tear slid down the werewolf's face. Sirius…why? Why couldn't you, just for once, take things seriously? You had her…you could have beaten her…instead, you taunted, you showed-off…just like you used to do in school. And now…

Now Remus was the last true member of the Marauders.

His arms closed entirely around Harry, more for his own comfort than the lad's. There was no coming back from this…the last line had been crossed. Voldemort had officially taken everything he could from Harry. His friends lying injured, possibly dying, a few rooms back…his parents, killed in his place so many years ago…and now his godfather, a man Harry had barely gotten to know in the short time they had spent together.

No more.

"It's okay, Cub. We'll get her…we'll get them all. Everyone that hurt you…everyone responsible…we'll stop them. With whatever it takes."

Harry began to shudder in Remus' arms. At first, he took it for silent sobbing, an activity he was well acquainted with. And one he would probably collapse into as well, once he would afford the time. But it was when the first sounds since the screaming escaped Harry's lips that he knew the cub was doing the exact opposite of crying.

He was laughing.

"Heh-heh…hee-hee…ah-HAAA-HAAA-HAAA-HA! HEEE-HE-HE-HEEEE! AAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA! OOOO-HOO-HOO! HA-HAAAAAA!"

Remus let go in shock. "…Prongslet?"

The laughing didn't stop. Harry skipped forward a bit, his hands bouncing in the air. "OOOO! EVERYONE RESPONSIBLE! THAT'S A KILLER! GET IT? KILLER? AAAAAA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!"

Harry did a half-pirouette in the air, and made a deep bow to Remus upon landing. "Thank you so much, Moony, for making things perfectly clear! For the first time, I can SEE! And yes, we will do whatever it takes. Starting…" Harry pointed his wand at the ceiling, "…now!"

A jet of flame shot upwards, striking the until-then hidden roof above. It began to spread, burning its way upwards. Remus collapsed in horror at the sight, the Fiendfyre above reflected in the now deranged eyes of his cub. "Harry…you can't burn down the Ministry..."

Harry gave another skip. "Oh, I'm not, Killer. You see, I'm only burning half. The half full of the planners, the schemers, and the plotters. The half…directly above us."

Remus had barely blinked before Harry had hoisted him up in the air by his jacket. "You work for me now, Killer. I'm the one running this show. And what a show it's gonna be!"

The hands at his neck disappeared, leaving Remus to hit the ground with a thud. With a groan, he pushed himself up. "Harry…"

The boy halted in his merry path merely long enough to correct him. "Harry's not home right now, Killer! You can call me…the Joker!"

Deranged laughing echoed throughout the building long after the boy disappeared from sight.

Remus could only lay on the floor and wonder exactly what sort of monster it was that Bellatrix Lestrange had accidentally unleashed on the Wizarding World.

Dumbledore was not happy.

While he had planned for Harry to follow Tom's vision to the Ministry, with Severus widening the connection under the cover of Occlumency lessons, he had most certainly not planned for so many children to willingly follow him in. If anything were to happy to any of the Weasley brats, he was quite sure Molly would tear strips off of him, blind loyalty or not. At least some of the plan had been carried out successfully: Sirius Black was now, beyond a doubt, dead. Blood trackers never lied, and Dumbledore took great comfort in that. The last barrier to Dumbledore's complete control of Harry Potter, forever eradicated.

It was safe to say that was the only thing that had gone correctly. Once Sirius' life signs ended, the ones tied to young Harry had gone absolutely mad. Then, the magic recorders inside the Ministry had followed, no longer registering any but the most deadly of curses being flung. It seemed that in his rage, Harry was resorting to any means necessary to secure his revenge.

That alone would not have been cause for alarm, if the very first spell he had cast had not been Fiendfyre. And aimed at the ceiling.

The wards on the Ministry would eventually contain it, but the damage done before then would possibly be upwards to half of the building. To have Harry lash out thus, with no specified target, planted all sorts of doubts as to how good of an idea it had been to have Severus pry open the connection to Tom. One Dark Lord was bad enough; two was unthinkable.

When the exchange of spells finally moved into the Ministry Atrium, and thus to where Dumbledore had planned to reveal Tom's continued existence, he Apparated down…only to find the room virtually intact, with no spell-fire to be seen anywhere.

What was to be seen however, was a sight that had Dumbledore quaking in his slippers. A giant smile had been painted across the entire floor, the glistening red leaving no doubts as to what had been used for the material. The body of Bellatrix Lestrange suspended from the ceiling left very little room for speculation as to exactly where that much blood had come from. With her mouth slit open in a hideous grin, and a trickling lightning bolt carved in her head, she resembled a vampire caught in the act of feeding, and then strung up to underline a point.

"Ah-hah! At last, the ever popular Penguin sees fit to grace us with his presence! Tell me old man, did you leave the Batman and Catwoman behind at Hogwarts, or are they merely…hanging around?"

The laughter that followed the voice would have been enough to scare Dumbledore on its own, but it was when he realized exactly who it was that they both belonged to that he was tempted to turn and run.

Harry Potter sat directly underneath Lestrange's body, the blood from her smile dripping every so often onto his head. The droplets in his hair were matched by the ones coming from his scar, cascading down the side of his face. In the shadows, one could easily mistake his hair itself for being the source of the blood, the trail coming from his forehead merely the evidence of some horrific cranial trauma.

But Dumbledore was not so mistaken. And the blood coming from the boy's scar told him all he needed to know about the only important injury in the room.

Barely managing to keep his voice even, Dumbledore asked a single question. "What have you done, Harry?"

Harry twirled a knife in his hand. "Oh, you know, this and that. 'This' being the lovely lady directly above me, and 'That' being the interesting fellow that you just missed."

Dumbledore took a deep breath. "Am I correct in assuming you allowed Voldemort to escape, Harry?"

"You mean old Clayface? On the contrary, my dear Penguin! It seems no one ever told out flat-faced friend it's generally not a good idea to try and possess someone like me!"

"And what kind of person is that, Harry?"

"Why, someone who Life's been good to, of course!"

Harry dissolved into giggles at his little joke, leaving Dumbledore more confused than before. "So, you drove him off then?"

"Drove him off? More like drove him in! Poor little Clayface; utterly unprepared to deal with the truth of life. His teeny little mind just went…POOF! And then, so did his body!"

The laughter resumed once more, echoing harshly throughout the Atrium. While waiting for it to subside, Dumbledore subtly readied his wand. If Harry's mind had shattered under the strain Voldemort had subjected it to, then it was likely that…

"The rest of him is still trapped inside me, yes, I thought that was obvious."

That stopped Dumbledore completely. "…How did you…"

"Know what you were going to say next? Why, that's quite simple. He told me."

"He? Who is 'He', Harry?"

"Oh, no one important. Just the fellow that told me it would be a good idea to smash that prophecy over there."

Dumbledore's eyes traveled to where Harry had pointed. To be precise, to the pile of broken glass on the floor.

"No prophecy, no Voldemort, and quite a few dead bodies lying around. Should keep you and your friend the Minister busy for quite a while yet. Oh, don't worry about your precious Weasleys. Our mutual friend Killer is already looking after them, as well as the rest. More's the pity; I rather anticipate you could have used the excuse to vacate the premises. How does it feel to be the one stuck for a change, Penguin?"

"I'm afraid you're just as stuck as I am, Harry. I cannot allow Voldemort to roam free, even if his mind has been, as you say, broken. Neither of us will be walking away from this."

"Ah, but you've overlooked one very important thing old man! Penguins don't walk…they waddle!"

And with that, Harry Potter disappeared from the Atrium, just as the first Aurors burst into the room. The minute the first fireplace lit up, a cloud of cards exploded from where Harry had been sitting, completely obscuring every inch of the floor, minus the giant bloody smile painted on it.

And one other glistening message Harry had left behind underneath Lestrange's corpse:

WHY SO SERIOUS?

Dumbledore had no choice but to raise his hands in surrender, as there seemed no end to the wands now pointed in his direction. A single card became stuck in his spectacles, the image of a grinning Joker now obscuring the right side of his vision.

Very well. That was the card Harry and Voldemort chose to play? Then Dumbledore would play his entire hand. And hope that it would be enough.

"You know, you always were Two-Faced, Ron. It's just easier now for everyone to see it."

Ron jerked in his infirmary bed and snarled at the source of all of his problems. "You! You bloody idiot! Look what you've done to me!"

Joker took in it all; the Cognivore had latched onto the right side of his face but good. Now there was practically nothing there beyond a few torn strips of muscle, and one eyeball sticking out. He shrugged. "Looks the same to me."

Ron merely thrashed harder, trying desperately to get at the one person he hated most in the world.

Joker conjured a chair and sat. "Now, I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us Weasley. I just want to let you know that, when you were being devoured by those brain-eaters…I was off fighting somewhere else. I didn't break those cages."

Ron gave one final jerk. "Your battle. Your plan."

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan. You know what I am? I'm an owl chasing Snitches. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! I just, do, things. Malfoy has plans; Dumbledore has plans; the Minister had plans. They're schemers; schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how…pathetic…their attempts to control things really are. So, when I say that you getting your face ripped off wasn't personal…you know that I'm telling the truth. It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer; you had plans. And look where that got you."

Joker released the restraint on Ron's arm, and immediately held it down to keep him from lashing out. "I just did what I do best; I took your little plan to be the best friend of the Boy-Who-Lived, and I turned it on itself. Look what I've done to Hogwarts with a few spells and couple of disobeyed orders, hmm? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan'…even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I say that a bunch of Muggles will be tortured at a sporting event…or a man will get his soul sucked out in a Ministry cover-up…nobody panics, because it's all part of the plan. But if I say that one, little old Dark Lord, has come back, well then everyone loses their minds!"

Joker pulled out Ron's wand from where he had recovered it in the Ministry, and slapped it into his hand. "Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair."

Ron pulled out his DA coin and held it up for Joker to see. "You live." Flip to the other side. "You die."

Joker smiled. "Now you're getting it."

The coin went up in the air…and then came twirling back down.