The Purge
Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide attempt (the reason for which was rape). Violence, gore, and torture directed at people who deserve it.
We're finally at the nasty (and good) stuff. This is where I start using the material from what I already published in Little Bouts of Randomness.
Behold the Lord High Executioner
Harry concealed himself behind the curtains of his four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower and began to plot. He'd been back at school for about a month and things at Hogwarts had never been worse. The toad-like woman they had teaching Defense was both a joke and a menace. Dolores Umbridge seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in assigning him detentions in which she would have him cut open the top of his hand with an enchanted quill. She was also trying to keep the students as downtrodden, uninformed, and uneducated in defensive magic as possible, which was already bad enough with exams but with Voldemort in the mix was lethal.
She had quickly found her way onto what Harry termed his "Little List."
He had plenty of names already, but he was biding his time at the moment. He'd needed to refine some of his plans and ensure he had the tools and skills necessary to confront his targets. Also, after learning about Regulus, Harry wanted to verify beyond a shadow of doubt that the people on his list were beyond redemption. It didn't take long for Harry to realize that Regulus was perhaps the only Death Eater to ever regret his actions, the rest were a bunch of sick fucks who needed to go down.
During his time back at school, Harry had been preparing for his first strike. He'd spoken with Dobby about a good place to get information out of Death Eaters without getting caught, and the little fellow had come through.
"There bes the Come-and-Go-Room, Harry Potter sir," Dobby had said, and then proceeded to tell him of the location and how to access it.
"Tell Dobby, Harry Potter sir," the elf continued. "Will yous be getting rid of bad Master Lucius?"
"Yes, Dobby," Harry had replied. "Lucius Malfoy is very high on my list. As is his son."
"Good. They is both deserving it."
"Dobby, I've been meaning to ask, are there wards to keep out house elves?"
"There is, Harry Potter sir. But most wizards is not using thems because they's not thinking elveses is being dangerous."
Typical wizarding stupidity, which Harry had every intention of exploiting. If the purebloods were foolish enough to leave their homes wide open to house elves, they were basically asking for someone to break in.
Harry had left that meeting with Dobby's enthusiastic promise of assistance in getting rid of the Death Eaters. That didn't mean Harry was going to stop his study of wards as there was a possibility that someone might have anti-elf wards, and even if they didn't there were other wards to be considered. Luckily, he was picking up on the field of wards rather quickly with Hermione's help.
Still, he had been waiting for the right moment. He'd never killed anyone before (except for Quirrell, of course) and had certainly never tortured anyone. He had been beginning to doubt if he could do it. That is, until he heard about the attacks.
It wasn't Death Eater attacks, at least not specifically. Harry lay back in his bed and thought about what happened earlier in the day. He'd been walking through the halls by himself, deep in thought, when he'd found a Hufflepuff girl from his year standing on the ledge of a window, about to throw herself down. He caught her by the hand, and she'd flinched terribly and tried to pull away to throw herself out.
"What are you doing?" he asked, not frantically but with determination.
"I'm trying to kill myself," she said, tears streaming down her face. "Please, just let me go. I can't stand it anymore."
"Why? What happened? Please, don't do this to yourself!"
"I can't keep living like this. Just let me die."
"Please, step down from the ledge and we can talk."
She turned to face him. Her eyes were reddened from crying and she had nasty bruises around her throat. She was in a terrible state and Harry was determined to do everything he could to help her. He managed to coax her into stepping down from her precarious perch and she collapsed into sobs.
"Please, I can't stand it anymore," she pleaded. "I just want it to end."
"What? Has someone been hurting you?"
She shuddered and tried to pull away again.
"Here, let's sit down a moment and talk," Harry continued. "There's no need for something so drastic." He managed to get her to sit beside him on the floor. He kept a safe distance from her; not close enough to make her uncomfortable but still near enough to stop her from hurting herself. "Do you need to see Madam Pomfrey?"
"I – I can't – no one can help –"
"What's your name?"
"S-Sally-Anne P-P-Perks."
"It's all right, Sally-Anne. You're going to be all right. But, please, tell me what's the matter. If someone's hurting you, I'll make sure it stops."
"You can't. No one can. They're purebloods. I'm just…I'm a half-blood."
"It doesn't matter to me if they're descendants of Merlin himself. You wouldn't be trying to kill yourself if they hadn't done something unforgiveable. Please, Sally-Anne, tell me. I want to see them punished."
"You don't want to get involved. They're protected by their families. I begged them to stop and they just laughed and hurt me more. They said I should be grateful they were interested in me, that I should shut up and accept my place in the world. I can't stand it anymore."
"Sally-Anne, I promise you that I will never let them do that to you again."
She broke down in tears again and flung herself at him, grasping him like a lifeline. Harry rested a hand on her back and muttered reassuring things, promises to make it stop. When she calmed down, she revealed that her attackers had been Crabbe and Goyle. She'd seemed to lose focus on the present as she recounted how it started. She said the first attack had been the previous year; the two Slytherins had cornered her in a hall and put her under a silencing spell before taking turns forcing themselves on her over and over again. She'd tried to report it to the headmaster, but had been dismissed. She had visited Madam Pomfrey after one brutal attack and told her what happened, but the healer somehow forgot about it afterwards.
Harry knew it had to be memory tampering. And he began to have a dreadful suspicion of who was behind it.
Things had only gotten worse since the start of the year. She hadn't wanted to go back to Hogwarts, but she hadn't told her parents why, she was too ashamed of herself because of what happened. Malfoy had also participated in many of the attacks, usually just to watch or cheer on his goons, as he apparently had other "conquests."
If Harry had any doubts about his mission, they were now as dead as the Death Eaters soon would be. All he needed was to test himself, to see if he could truly fulfill his promises. And he knew just how to do that.
"Wakey wakey, Draco," said a mocking voice.
Draco Malfoy opened his eyes and his vision slowly came into focus on the grinning figure standing over him.
"Potter! What are you doing?! When my father-!"
"Yes, yes, when your father hears about this, blah, blah, blah," Harry said dismissively. "Of course, your father won't be hearing about anything from you because you'll be dead by then."
"WHAT?!"
That's when Draco realized he was strapped to a chair and didn't have access to his wand.
"You won't get away with this, Potter!" Draco screamed. "You'll be sent to Azkaban!"
Harry chuckled. It was a dark, sardonic kind of laugh that sent shivers of fear up Draco's spine.
"I have no intention of ending up in Azkaban. You see, Draco, the magical law can only help you if they can link any magical activity back to me; however, I will be strictly adhering to 'muggle' methods. I am going to teach you why muggles should be feared."
"You're bluffing, Potter!"
"Am I? See for yourself, Draco. We are alone here, you're restrained, and you don't have access to your wand. Speaking of which." Harry withdrew Draco's wand from his pocket, smiled genially, and snapped the stick in two before the horrified boy's eyes.
"Y-you can't do this, Potter," Draco said. "You're Dumbledore's golden boy."
"Really? How many time have you seen me interact with the headmaster? Considering how badly he's fucked up my life, I will never be his 'boy' in any sense. It doesn't really matter, though; there is no way he would ever suspect me of what I am about to do to you."
"W-what are you going to do?" Draco now looked about ready to wet himself.
"Well, the thing is, Draco, I have had enough of you and your ilk getting away with anything short of murder, and I won't give you the chance to even attempt that. So, I thought to myself, 'Harry, old boy, no true Englishman would ever allow scum like those Death Eater spawn to go on to torture, rape, and kill.' So, I decided to take a leaf out of the book of Matthew Hopkins, my great-great-great, or something, grandfather.
"You know about him, don't you? The famous Witch-Finder General. Amazing what you can find with just a bit of digging through your family tree. I'm just continuing a bit of family tradition; you of all people should understand that, Malfoy."
"You won't get away with this, Potter!" Draco persisted desperately. "If you kill me, people will suspect you were behind it when it gets out that you were missing!"
"But I'm not missing, Malfoy," Harry said smoothly. "At this moment, I am sitting in the Gryffindor common room studying for Divination."
"But…how?"
"Amazing what you can do with a bit of Polyjuice and a loyal, if somewhat insane, collaborator."
"Who?"
"I found out just recently that my dear Miss Luna Lovegood happens to be descended from John Stearne, a good friend of my ancestor Hopkins. Seems that some friendships can transcend generations. Now then, we were about to discuss what I am going to do with you. I think I will start by using an old-fashioned method of determining where you accepted the mark of Satan."
Harry dumped a bag of silver needles onto the nearby table.
"The trick is to find the one spot on your body that doesn't feel pain. So I will just be sticking these needles into you until you stop screaming. Then, once I have finished my investigation and determined that you are a servant of the Devil, I will proceed to the next stage of my inquiry."
"Why…why are you doing this?! You're a wizard, too!"
"But you don't see me that way, do you, Draco? You just see me as scum under your boots. You and your Death Eater friends would gladly see me and those I care about suffer much worse than what I will do to you. Cheer up, Draco; you're going to have something that no one else will ever have."
"W-what?"
"The honor of being the first in the Purge I am about to unleash on the magical world. I know it might seem a bit harsh, but it's all for the 'Greater Good' as Dumbledore might say."
"Ron, have you noticed anything odd about Harry?" said Hermione.
Ron looked up from his Quidditch magazine that was secretly covering a copy of Playwizard and looked over at his best mate. Harry was reading his Divination book upside-down and humming cheerily.
"Besides the fact that he's still not talking to me, he seems fine," said Ron.
"He's unusually cheerful considering recent events. Plus, he's reading his textbook upside-down."
"It's a Divination book, Hermione. It's not like he can learn anything from it right side up."
"Speaking of learning, shouldn't you be studying, too?"
"I'll get to it." He held the magazine up to his face and grinned as the girl in the picture started to peel off her clothing.
"You know, Draco, I just want to say how grateful I am that you decided to take me into your confidence," Harry said as he cleaned off the large, jagged knife in his hand.
Draco moaned in pain. He was covered in tiny, bleeding points where the pins had been jabbed into him. Then Potter had started asking him questions. How many students he'd raped or tortured, which other Slytherins participated in such activities, what he knew about the Death Eaters, and many other things of a similar nature. When he'd refused to talk, Potter slit open his arms and forced a bottle of blood-replenishing potion down his throat so that he had the continuous sensation of bleeding out without actually dying. Next, Potter pushed his fingers into Draco's eyes, as though testing himself to see if he could go further, gouging them out of their sockets as Draco screamed in agony. Potter had then taken great pleasure in using the jagged knife to slowly cut off Draco's…very sensitive parts.
Draco revealed everything he did and knew. He ratted out every Slytherin boy he knew was involved in the attacks, he squealed about all the things he'd done, and he confirmed numerous people as Death Eaters.
"I truly appreciate how helpful you've been."
"So…so now you'll let me go?"
"Let you go?" Harry's laugh echoed cruelly throughout the room. "Oh, Draco, whatever made you think you were going to live through this? No, I'm afraid I can't leave you alive. After all you've done and now that you know what I'm up to, I'm afraid your only consolation is that you will soon be dead. But not here, I need to make this more public. A warning for others."
Harry called for Dobby and initiated the next stage.
Umbridge stood fuming outside the Great Hall, preparing herself to fly into a rage at Dumbledore. She'd come downstairs for breakfast that morning to discover a crowd of students gathered outside the sealed doors. Dumbledore was standing amidst the crowd, assuring everyone that there was nothing to be worried about and that they should leave for the moment.
"Headmaster, is there a problem?" Umbridge asked in that sickly-sweet tone while looking like a puffed-up toad.
"I'm afraid so, Madam," he replied somberly. "There's been a rather…messy accident."
"Accident?" said an imposing figure in a red uniform who had just exited the Great Hall. "Is that what you'd like to call it, Headmaster?"
"What is going on?" said Umbridge. "What's happened?"
As the students were still hanging about, the auror put up a privacy spell around the three of them.
"There's been a murder," said the auror.
"What?!" Umbridge exclaimed. "How? Who?"
"We're not sure. There's no trace of magic other than a potion in his system. It's like a scene out of the witch-hunts. The victim was repeatedly stuck with needles, his arms were slit open, his eyes gouged out, and his, erm…anatomy was removed in a very brutal way. He was then fastened onto some sort of pyre and roasted to death. I wouldn't recommend going in there, ma'am, it's rather messy."
"Who was the victim?!" Umbridge demanded, forcing back a bit of bile that had risen in her throat.
"Draco Malfoy."
"That poor boy. It's an atrocity that this should happen to such a fine, upstanding, young wizard. What will his family say?"
"I intend to inform Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy presently," said Dumbledore. "I am certain we will find the culprit. Auror Watkins, are you sure there was no trace of magic?"
"Positive, sir," he replied. "As I said, the only thing close to magic was a potion. A blood-replenishing potion, to be precise. It seems the killer didn't want the boy dying too quickly."
"It was Potter who did this!" Umbridge announced firmly. "I know it was!"
"Control yourself, Madam Umbridge," said Dumbledore. "Young Harry would never do something so Dark. Why, he's as firmly on the side of the Light as I am."
"We also did a check of the dormitories," said Auror Watkins. "The portrait that guards Gryffindor Tower said no one passed her at all during the night."
"Thank you, Auror Watkins. Do please return to your investigation. I have to make that floo-call to the Malfoys. The loss of a child is a devastating thing."
"But, I don't understand," Umbridge persisted. "How could this have happened? And how could someone do this without using magic?"
"When we find the answer to that question, ma'am, you'll be informed," said Auror Watkins.
Classes had been cancelled that day and breakfast was delivered to the common rooms as the Great Hall was closed for the investigation. Already the rumors were flying back and forth about what was going on. In the Slytherin dorms, everyone was wondering what happened to Malfoy, who was mysteriously absent. In Hufflepuff, a young girl opened a letter, inviting her to witness a promise being fulfilled and justice delivered very soon.
In Gryffindor Tower, Harry had hidden himself away behind his curtains again. He realized that he wasn't as disturbed by what he'd done as he had expected to be. Draco deserved everything he got and his two goons were next. He'd invited Sally-Anne to join him in their upcoming demise because he felt it might help her get past the dark time she was going through. If she decided she wanted to help him with the rest of his plans, she was welcome to do so but he would not hold her to any obligation. He wasn't Dumbledore, after all.
Still, the fact that he felt no remorse for what he'd done unnerved him a little. He knew he should feel terrible for torturing and killing, but he honestly couldn't be bothered. He was just going to do it again later and he really couldn't muster the will to care about what he'd done and was going to do. All he was interested in was devising new and more gruesome ways of dealing with the monsters who would inflict the same torments on people who were innocent.
Did that make him the same kind of monster? He wasn't sure anymore. He'd not simply crossed the line in dealing with Malfoy, he'd obliterated the line, ripped it up, and used it to light the fire that had roasted the little pillock last night. He hoped he wasn't a monster. But then, in war, certain things could make an otherwise good and noble man into something so vile and twisted that his own mother would probably reject him if she'd known. And while Harry didn't really know anything about what his mother was like, he was fairly certain she wouldn't have approved of his methods.
