All rights of the Harry Potter series belong to J.K Rowling and Warner Bros. I do not own Harry Potter or any related characters, and I do not profit from this in any way, shape or form.
It takes shape. In between, the darkness growing in him. It took form, even a guise. Harry Potter stood removed and steady. Away from the fluttering throb in his ears. He tried to remind himself that he had done his best. Sirius was supposed to be here in these bleached halls. Despite he wasn't. Harry's best wasn't enough. Or perhaps it was too much. Sirius had said so himself. That Harry had done beautifully.
But was there any beauty in wanting to kill someone?
A nagging voice lived in his head. It was so loud that sometimes he couldn't sleep. He told his aunt once, and she thanked Jesus that he had Tinnitus.
On top of being a freak.
He'd always been contented with every beating noise. How it resonated like a hymn or a whispering cadence far from reach. He wouldn't care if it lingered around for the rest of his life. It asked him meaningful questions. About faith and reasoning. In his mind, sepia, the colour of living pictures that thrived in that old photo album Hagrid presented him. It tested his turmoil.
The voice started getting louder and louder tonight, and he couldn't ignore it anymore. It was getting so good at manipulating his thoughts that it had taken control. It wept finely. In and out of Harry's tongue, an electric wash of resonance after casting Crucio for the first time. Sentiments aside, standing at the inevitable edge of the world, the raven-haired child of prophecy gave in to the need. To cause harm. At his own pace, set the tempo for the abdominal aches and twitching muscles.
His godfather's memory tainted the sallow skin of his heart as he studied his drudgery. The woman was breathing faster. Black strips of her dress strained on splayed shoulders.
She let out a demented laugh. "Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?"
He dreamed of it at night. Let it breathe on him—a silken touch of agony against his lips. Brazen—full of vivacity, as it gave him a sense of longing when it left.
"You've got to mean them, Harry." The unhinged partition of Bellatrix Lestrange's mouth, curling into a sneer, liberated him from that nagging and irritable voice in his head. He ought to thank her. "You need to really want to cause pain—to enjoy it—"
"Crucio!"
Lestrange squirmed under the miserable burden of the Unforgivable Curse. Her crookedly regal form danced like a fleeing spider. All under the weight of his magic. Her hands in fists, she tugged at her dark, bristling strands.
"Crucio!"
Perhaps this was destiny. Right now, whatever transpires will be an act of fate. Lestrange's screams were delightful. Like a promise, a self-fulfilling vow to be rid of it all. For Harry to take back his dignity.
"Crucio…"
A spindly sound echoed down the grand arches of the Ministry. All for the sake of that promise, a lurking, cruel laughter. His worst nightmare didn't seem as scary anymore.
"Do it…" it said to him. Gentle. Like it did, calling at the brink of dawn before leaving without a noise. "You know the words…."
He did.
He knew them by heart now. Sirius Black's death would not go unpunished.
"Crucio!"
Red whirled from the tip of his holly wand. A seductive torrent of amusement swept through him as the spell bled through the cracks. It shot at the other man, a thin current of crimson lightning. He pleaded for the euphoria to consume him. He wanted the curse to enslave him—to confine his body in a dire caress.
Voldemort, the greatest Dark Lord the Wizarding World had ever seen, was under Harry's absolute dominion. His knuckles turned white, his grasp not yielding. He demanded more. Harry craved to kill him… and to see life leaving those red eyes. His gut burned with nerves. As much as he wished to destroy the foul man. Even though it terrified him.
He couldn't.
Harry's family has waited fourteen years. They can wait longer. They were all gone anyway. Now, Harry's greatest desire was to see this man sink, hoping it would be agonizing. He wanted Voldemort to beg him for mercy. He wanted to see his death.
Harry craved to impair the Dark Lord before he killed him. He needed to make Tom Riddle know, even if the pain was terrible. That Harry was going to massacre his followers. He would hunt them, and he would dispose of them. Voldemort's Death Eaters were destined for the loving mercy of death. They all needed to realize that Harry wasn't a hero. It would make it far more painless. Harry was out for them. He was going to be a killer. He was not strong-minded enough to play the part of boy saviour any longer.
"Harry?" Albus Dumbledore said. He was here, challenging Harry's morality as he always did. "What have you done, my boy…." It was not a question but a comprehensive answer to Dumbledore's own mistake.
Voldemort's anemic body was now recovering from the cathartic expression of Harry's love. Torture. His heart was inexorable. It wrecked a pandemonium in his chest. Harry had nothing to say, not a chirp from his mind, not the memory of his parents dancing in that old picture. Dumbledore's life-threatening demeanour told Harry everything, the horrific look of fright on his face at the slow demise he was granting Voldemort.
But the syrupy ambrosia of the Cruciatus stopped. It was a marvel to Harry; how tormenting someone was so pleasurable. His parents' murderer would not be allowed death, not yet, for still, he lived through the minds and voices of his followers. Harry would pick them apart one by one, granting them his love.
The first recipient was Bellatrix Lestrange.
The blue sleeve of Harry's jumper settled under his wrist. It emitted a hollowness as a faint hiss simmered on his tongue. "Avada—"
Like a needle, it stung. Caustic in his hand, unbridled pain riled him as the headmaster clutched his hand. But the pain… the hunger… stemmed from his mind.
"Harry, I can not let you." The judicious headmaster of Hogwarts barred him from exacting his vengeance. "If you kill her, Harry, you may as well be killing the good that is left in you."
The wand clattered to the floor, Dumbledore yanking him into his chest. His silver beard buried Harry's face as they rocked back and forth. This weakness, Harry thought. This weakness is what will kill him.
Lestrange laughed, giggling even. Harry knew she was trying to hold herself together. She was so mad she was getting the shakes. Sirius Black was a great man. He deserved it all. The fame, the attention Harry had—he was Harry's. He could've given Harry a home, a life of his own. Harry wouldn't mind living at 12 Grimmauld Place for the rest of it. If Sirius was there, it didn't matter where he lived. How could she sit there and laugh?
"It will be fine, Harry. We fight for the greater good, so all will be fine." Dumbledore said to him, kindly, softly. "You brave boy. Rest for me. Breathe because I am here, and you need not fret over a world that's abandoned you." Harry almost believed him.
"Excellent foreplay, headmaster," Voldemort said, his tone chilling to the bone.
A squall of wind lashed against him, and Harry plummeted into one of the empty floo exits. The black-brick tiles of the floors and high walls crackled with a thunderous blitz of green. Dumbledore had spurred him away and was now confronting his prey.
"—Harry Potter. I, your greatest enemy, do not want you to rest, you see—Harry, you will suffer. I will torment you, torture you while I tear apart the flesh that bears you, twisting you as you scream for my name."
Harry would grant him the same. He was already missing a nose. What's saying he needed his eyes and ears?
On the other end of the vast hall, Bellatrix Lestrange gambled with circumstance, somersaulting into a wisp of black smoke, twirling like a cyclone. Her spiralling coiled form waltzed tighter and tighter until it was the size of a walnut as she vanished.
"You will be my greatest prize, Harry," Voldemort said. "You will die knowing that, of all who have opposed me, you were special." The hall darkened as Dumbledore and Voldemort's spells collided and released in a vacuum detonation of cobalt blue.
Silence fell.
Glass from the shattered windows roared down like flames, thousands of glimmering flares dropping to the floor.
Voldemort flinched, but only slightly. With a shriek, he drove his frame back with the force of a typhoon, closing his wand-wielding hands together above his smooth pistachio green head. A chorus of footsteps joined them. The DA and a mob of Ministry officials raced in to witness the end of a Dark Lord.
"Expelliarmus!"
Neville. It was a strange thing, undoubtedly. The meekest was the first to act. Voldemort's wand flew from his hand in a deft stroke, battering the walls. Harry inspected the scene, his arm held away from his body and brought his wand up, the words lingering in his mouth. Maybe Voldemort didn't deserve torture, Harry thought. He just needed to be put down.
"Avada Kedav—"
A prick of pins and needles tipped Harry onto the rich stone floorboards. Dumbledore had yet again circumvented the inevitable. A jet of bright green light still ruptured from his wand, hitting one of the grand statues behind Voldemort. The man-serpent hissed, weeping for his lost breath. The splitting melody of shock waves and loosening hinges guided Harry's eyes to the groaning of the statue's hand. From the carpus to the lean phalanxes, apertures and ruptures cracked along the golden surface. As he picked the wand from the floor, the highest point of the bust collapsed right behind Voldemort, leaving the man brayed.
"Crucio!"
It was so excruciatingly beautiful—the Cruciatus was becoming Harry's favourite spell. What Harry lost tonight, he gained back tenfold. Sirius was dead, but Harry had learned something crucial.
He was doing beautifully.
Voldemort tumbled back onto the larger-than-life hand as Dumbledore towed him into his arms again. "Harry, you need to stop!"
"Let me go!" Harry drove himself forward, but Dumbledore held true. "I want to hurt him, I-I—I want to leave him scarred!" Just like that fateful night. He wanted the man to bare a lightning bolt scar wherever he went as a sign that Harry Potter marked him for death.
Under Dumbledore's constraint, he floundered, only feeling how the bearded man's head shook. "No, Harry."
"Look at me!" Harry loathed that his voice broke as he shrieked. "Tom! Look at me!"
"You, Potter, are such an intriguing creature… I must observe in finer detail," said Voldemort, raising his thin, haggard hand. His wand flew back to him, and he clasped the bone-like rod with a rocky grip.
Not a word passed in the atrium.
"Why'd you stop then?! Someone grab hold of the beast!" Minister Cornelius Fudge said. And to Harry's amazement, he was triumphant as the Ministry Officials drew their wands at the perfect time, firing down Voldemort with sundry sparks of spells.
A barrier of blue formed around Voldemort, the spell guarding him against the raving plight of colours. Dumbledore let Harry go, only for him to be tossed onto a separate pair of arms. Remus had him now, and Harry struggled to avoid it from happening. Just as he failed to protect the people he loved.
"He's gone…." Remus said, his own lips toiling to stay still. "He loved you, and now he's gone, Harry."
Tears, Harry learned, were evil things. As the driblets cascaded down his rose-tinted cheeks, running in rivers over the soft stump of his nose, they blinded him with their cruel force. In Harry's world, things were always black and white. Harry was the saviour of the Wizarding World. Voldemort was the root of all evil. And now tears were a weakness, and he refused to cry.
Remus parted his mouth once more. "I'm sorry."
Harry let the tears devour him. He cried for his godfather and his parents. He wept for the boy sleeping in that cupboard under the stairs. Harry grieved himself because he was so tired. He couldn't stop, couldn't stop trying to fill in the blanks. He just wanted them to pay.
Dearly departed souls still love. They still live. They need people like Harry to remember. Carry their memory on their sleeve and teach it to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren so that the next generation might remember and honour them better than him.
"The Dark Lord is no more!" Cornelius Fudge shouted, his wrinkled smile reaching ear to ear. There he was, that sick sod, Tom Riddle, weak. Harry laughed the anger away as spells hurled in the sky snapped into confetti and fireworks, brightening up the broken bannisters and shattered walls of the Ministry of Magic. Voldemort was defeated. Bound by rope, the Minister was now going to arrange Riddle's execution or another pitiful fate which would end him.
Harry was victorious. A cackle left him unhinged. He had won.
So why was Dumbledore looking so grim?
"Harry, have you ever heard the term... Horcrux?"
Author's Note: Hello there! I originally posted this fic on AO3 under the penname Petri_Chord (Don't ask) and decided that I might as well drop it on here as well. I don't recommend checking out my page on AO3 because of a horrific fic I'm writing on there that has demolished my life, and I am currently in a state of constant depression solely from the amount of cringe I've endured while editing my 14-year-old self's writing. :D
Reviews and criticism are welcome and encouraged! I love you! (*^▽^*)