Chapter Twenty: The Reality

December 24th

8:22pm

Greengrass Manor, Oxfordshire

Daphne

She grunted as her flesh pounded against the bag before her, swaying only slightly before her other hand connected, restarting the process. She was training alone tonight, Harry had decided to turn in early in anticipation of Sirius' party craze which afforded her some time alone. Not that she didn't enjoy training with Harry, without him she'd have died against the first semi-competent death eater no matter how self confident she was. But she had spent much of her life training in solitary and sometimes she missed it.

With her body in overdrive, her mind cleared, affording her a unique kind of clarity that she didn't experience often. It was different from meditating, more active thinking. Where she might sit back and reflect when she meditated, she made plans when training, big and small. For instance a small plan she had been working on was how to oust Draco as the death eater in training he was, a small plan because the boy lacked subtlety and cunning. Admittedly it was taking longer than expected as she didn't fully understand what the ferret was up to but at least Blaise had provided a detailed enough schedule that the blonde followed to a tee so catching him in the act shouldn't be too precarious.

A larger plan was increasing operations for their side. As of right now, no preemptive strikes had been made on death eaters simply because they didn't have enough intel. Death eater movements, safe houses, informants and people of importance were all tidbits of information that they were lacking. An informant for their side would go a long way in helping them make strikes against death eaters but the sheer complexity of placing an informant well respected enough to get actionable information was driving her around the bend.

'The people we trust aren't ever getting near the inner circle and the people who might have a shot are simply impossible to trust,' she thought frustratedly punching the bag.

"Careful dear, you might hurt its feelings," Johanna said, announcing herself to her daughter.

Daphne turned around and saw her mother standing in the doorway of the training room. It wasn't often Johanna visited the east wing, she much preferred spending her time in the west wing with the library and the greenhouses. This being the primary reason why Daphne was confused for the visit. So, when Johanna entered the room, Daphne peeled away her sweaty strands of hair from the front of her face and poured herself a glass of water from a nearby jug.

"What brings you over here mother?" Daphne asked as she took a seat on one of the benches near the centre of the room. Johanna pottered around a moment, analysing the equipment with a measure of interest before taking a seat herself on an opposite bench.

"I come bearing a gift," she remarked as she revealed a tall rectangular box she had hidden behind her back. "To Daphne from Harry, it says."

Daphne scrunched her eyebrows in thought, neither of them spoke about presents beyond Slughorn's own. She had assumed, considering they were celebrating separate holidays, that the festivities would remain similarly separate. It seemed, Harry had thought otherwise.

"May I?" Daphne asked as she held out her hand to take the gift. Her mother handed it over with an imperceptible expression and made no move to leave so that Daphne could open the gift in private. Not that she minded, of course, as she examined the box.

Green cardboard, wrapped in a red ribbon with an adorning wreath, as though he'd picked up the first book on Yule traditions and crammed as many as he could into the container of the present itself. Whilst the wrapping was a nice effort, she much more desired to know what was inside. She delicately untied the ribbon, careful not to wreck the wreath and paced the wrappings to the side. The box itself wasn't too heavy which made her imagination run rampant for the sliver of time that it took for her to open the box and set the lid aside like the wrappings. Inside lay a candle, gold in colour with sun sigils finely painted along its face but what most interested her were the tiny runes inscribed around the base. She knew what some of them meant… journey, fire and… gift.

"A two way ritual candle," Daphne realised out loud, "if mine is alight so too will be his."

"My, my that is quite thoughtful," Johanna commented, "is there a note?"

Daphne pulled the candle from the box and immediately saw a small slip of paper at the bottom of the box. She took the note out and put the candle back in. The note wasn't even the size of her palm but she could see the messy scrawl of Harry's handwriting inside. She opened the note and read the message that laid inside in her head;

'To Daphne,

I hope this gift will remind you that the darkness retreats and the light is returning back to us.

From Harry,

See you soon

P.S. Sirius helped me with the traditional wording so if I've said something highly offensive I apologise.'

"Is the boy not muggle raised?" Johanna asked her daughter as she inspected the candle more closely.

Daphne closed the note and pocketed it for later, opting to deal with her mother before her feelings. "He is," she answered shortly.

"And he knows our ways because you taught him?" Johanna questioned further.

Daphne wondered what her point was but still allowed herself to be led on. "Mostly, I imagine his godfather has some role in it, Granger too."

"Hmm," Johanna absently hummed. She continued to examine the gift but Daphne had long since recognised it was a facade, an act to dance between heavier subject matters. "Be careful, my dear, you play a dangerous game and it would not do for you to be distracted."

Daphne hadn't seen her mother in such a way before, always the unbothered and flippant woman. She didn't seem to want a response either as she rose from her bench and handed the gift to Daphne before exiting the room swiftly. Daphne no longer had the desire to train as her mother's words had troubled her. She went to bed early and despite her troubles, later that night, a small room in central London was illuminated by the glow of a candle sitting on a nightstand, bringing a smile to the room's sole occupant.

December 25th

4:21am

Black Chateau, Isle of Man

Harry

"-et up!"

The shout startled Harry awake, he bolted upright and recognised the shaggy blur of Sirius' hair.

"There's an attack, St. Mungo's, we need to get going now," the older man explained quickly, before stomping out of the room in what Harry assumed were his combat boots.

He threw the covers off and his glasses on, swiftly dressing himself in his dark grey long sleeve, black jeans and boots. He thanked himself for his foresight to leave an outfit ready for occasions such as this. Harry pulled on the dagger belt and summoned his invisibility cloak and mirror.

A single mental check was all he allowed himself to make sure he had everything before he raced downstairs and towards the meeting room. He heard a commotion from behind the door only for it to vanish when he burst into the room. Moody, Tonks and Sirius were huddled around a map of what he assumed to be St Mungo's.

"The others?" he asked.

Sirius replied shortly, "Remus is at the manor."

Harry nodded and openly questioned, "any information? Force size, nature of the attack, hostages?"

"St Mungo's sent out an auror alert twelve minutes ago," Tonks reported, "nothing else."

"A trap?" Sirius asked.

Harry was thinking the same thing. 'He knows I'll respond, it could be a perfect ambush. Unfortunately, we have to respond.'

"Even if it is, the off chance this is a legitimate attack means we have to show presence. An attack on our country's premier medical facility is too dangerous to ignore," he told them. He could see in their eyes that they agreed, none of them willing to allow such an atrocity to occur. "Will we have any of the order's support?" he asked Moody who shook his head.

"Nay laddie," Moody responded, "Albus is out of the country and without him there is no coordination."

Harry figured that would be the case. He studied the map for a moment and formulated the plan. "Alright," he spoke, "we're going to apparate to the grocer on the corner of the street and walk up to the department store hiding the entrance to St Mungo's. We'll wait for Daphne and Remus there then in pairs we're going to sweep the floors all the way up to the fifth. Remember, we have no rules of engagement, shoot first and be decisive."

Varying degrees of resoluteness met Harry's own, they all knew the danger and were prepared to take the risk.

"We leave in two minutes."

/WARNING: GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE/

December 25th

4:31am

St Mungo's, London

Harry

He appeared on the pavement suddenly, having to steady himself on a nearby wall so that he didn't fall. Three soft pops of apparition filled the morning London air and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to the owner of the appendage and saw Sirius nod at him to lead on. He did so, moving quickly, but deliberately, towards where he knew St Mungo's entrance to be, past parked cars and closed shop fronts.

He saw something which gave him cause to halt their advance, a pair of legs and boots belonging to what he assumed to be an dead auror poking out from behind the back of a car. He looked to the back of their line and locked eyes with Moody, motioning with his hand for the man to do a three-sixty with his eye to check their surroundings. The older auror did so and shook his head at Harry which gave him the idea that they were alone.

He crept towards the fallen auror, making sure to keep his eyes up to check for any surprise attacks. To his fortune, he made it to the auror safely, but the man was not as lucky as he. A huge chunk of the man's left side was burnt with what looked to be something acidic and his, which were now on the outside, were slowly being eaten away by the active curse.

A soft gasp let him know that Tonks knew who this man was. He looked back and saw her sad and angry expression, hair shifting from blue to red uncontrollably.

"Matthews, he always took the graveyard shift because his fiancé worked early into the morning as a healer," she revealed. As much as it horrified Harry to think of the man's fate, he couldn't help but file that information away. 'He was here when the attack happened, not in response to it, poor fella was probably the first victim.'

He stood from his kneeling position and looked up in time to see Remus and Daphne appear across the street. A silent motion drew their attention and they walked over. Harry softly explained the plan to the two and they all turned to the department store window that doubled as the front door. He stepped forward to breach the barrier but heard a wheeze behind him. The whole party turned back to the presumably dead auror, the origin of the noise.

"He's…" Tonks started before muttering some kind of expletive and refusing to look at her coworker.

Harry could see the auror's lung furiously working to push air through his vocal cords to scream. The problem was that half of his lung had been ripped apart by the curse so what would have been an agonising sound came out as the pitiful wheeze they heard before. The knowledge that the auror was still alive wracked the group to their core. Harry could feel the tension building and knew it wasn't long before their emotions over took their duty.

"Go, secure the reception," he commanded. The other two pairs entered the hospital after hesitatingly looking at him, they knew what he was going to do. Only Harry and Daphne remained out in the street, neither opting to look at the other.

Harry sighed, the right decision often was the hardest and this was one he couldn't delay. He walked forward and crouched next to the man who turned his head in his direction slightly. The gruesome sight elevated once more by the half burned face of the man in plain view for Harry. Teeth and bone greeted Harry, the muscles of Matthew's face contracting and contorting in pain. The man's one good eye fixed on his own pair, wide and afraid, Harry might have seen a flash of recognition in there too but it was quickly overshadowed by a plea.

Harry reached down with one hand and grabbed the handle of his dagger whilst using the other to stun the man with his wand. Swiftly, as to not lose his nerve nor allow the man to awaken again, he drew his blade and stabbed the man in the head, ending his suffering. He used his wand to clean the blade when he pulled it free and sheathed it without hesitation. He stood and met Daphne's gaze, a look of respect was given and her nod only added to it. He made no comment as he walked past her and into the hospital.

The reception was a mess, overturned chairs and bodies in contorted positions laid out in bare view. Their faces were in serene expressions, as opposed to the mangled image of the auror guard's. It was as if the death eaters had simply frozen them in time and not wantonly thrown killing curses at innocent men, women and children. Sirius approached him and Harry made the mental comparison that he looked more like he did when he escaped Azkaban than the healthy and free man from yesterday.

"The reception is clear, not much can be done for anyone here," he reported sadly. "We did find something odd though."

Harry nodded and before moving to follow Sirius over to the reception desk where Remus was hunched over a blonde girl in lime green robes. "You found something?"

Remus didn't look up at Harry when he asked the question, instead he grabbed the girl's arm and tried bending it with great difficulty. "Her body is cold and stiff, her lips are dry too."

"What does that mean?" he asked, not understanding the significance.

"It means she's been dead a lot longer than forty five minutes," Sirius explained. "Closer to two or three hours."

"You don't think it was Matthews who alerted the aurors, do you?" Harry questioned and both the men had serious expressions as they shook their heads in the negative. Harry rubbed his head and walked over to Tonks. "The aurors are mobilising right?"

Tonks turned away from a family who had died trying to protect their young boy and said, "Scrimengour had the troops in the briefing room when I left, they should be arriving soon."

'That eliminates it simply being a trap for me. If this attack was hours ago then there's a good chance the aurors were alerted on purpose. We're to act as the vanguard then, clear the way for Scrimengour to clean up the mess.'

"Let's move," he said to the room. "Daphne and I have Artefacts. Sirius take Remus and clear the admissions department. Moody, Tonks check out the alchemy room. We'll regroup at the stairs."

The six of them walked down the singular hallway leading further into the magical structure, pointedly ignoring the light blue walls painted in dried blood. The knowledge that they were more than likely walking into a trap weighed on all of them, more so than the bodies slumped in the hall that they frequently had to step over. They reached a double door with a sign above it that was half scorched but Harry could make out the snippets of it which read: Admis—ons De—r-ments

He walked past it with Daphne, Moody and Tonks, hearing the door open for Sirius and Remus to enter. To his relief he didn't hear a commotion immediately which he hoped meant they wouldn't be set upon by death eaters. The remaining four shifted past the stairwell they were meant to regroup at, Harry mentally noted that the stairway was the only place absent of a body or blood. The curiosity kept him occupied for no more than a second before he realised they had reached the artefact accidents room, a small windowless door with an intact label this time.

"Be careful Potter," Moody mumbled, although it came out as a low growl. His wooden leg clacked against the ground quietly as he moved on with Tonks towards the final door at the end of the hall.

Harry put a hand on the door and slowly inched it forward with his wand in front of his face, just because the others weren't ambushed doesn't mean he wouldn't be. The ward came into view at a crawl, the flickering candles that were meant to light up the room from the ceiling seemed dampened somehow which he boiled down to the time more than tampering, on any normal day people would be sleeping at this hour, today was no normal day.

It wasn't a large ward which reminded Harry just how small the wizarding world was compared to the muggle. The walls were lined with beds and privacy curtains but it didn't go on for very long, there were no more than ten beds on each side, each with their curtains drawn. The pair of them edged forward, they'd have to check each bunk and neither of them had any desire to witness the devastation visited upon sleeping patients.

It had to be done though, they needed to know the extent of the damage and if there were death eaters lying in wait. They split off, each taking a side of the room, Harry cautiously strode towards the first bed and read the nameplate but didn't recognise the name nor the ailment. With a steady hand, he gripped the curtains tightly, then wrenched them open swiftly whilst raising his wand and formulating a spell in his mind. He paused… the bed was empty. He spun around and found Daphne's first bunk was empty as well, Daphne's expression, he imagined, was similarly surprised.

He tried the next one, and the next, the result was the same. He stopped at a bunk with a name that he recognised, Katie Bell, still at the hospital because of Draco's blunder. Just as the other's, her bed was empty too, no signs of violence were present and the ward seemed undisturbed in all other facets. Once they had checked every bunk, Harry turned to Daphne and was fixed with an expression of doubt.

"They could have been extracted," he tried, he knew it was unlikely though.

Although Harry didn't need to hear it, she replied, "if the attack happened hours ago and someone got the patients out, we'd have been called in hours ago."

"Why would he take them though?"

"Hostages, sacrifices, meat for an inferius army, the possibilities are endless when the dark arts are involved," Daphne answered in a detached manner. He knew, in her mind, the patients and staff of this facility had already been written off. He didn't blame her either, never had he even imagined this level of brutality, men, women and children slaughtered for no obvious purpose.

Harry didn't respond to Daphne's deductions, he didn't know how. If he thought about the things the dark lord could do to these people he'd be too distracted to think of anything else, that was much too dangerous right now. He turned on his heel and picked up his pace, briskly walking back through the ward and out into the hall. Sirius and Remus were further down the hall, waiting at the stairs. To his right, the door at the end of the hall opened and a dusty haired Tonks exited the alchemy room with a glum expression with Moody following behind. The group converged on the stairs and it seemed the others had found more upsetting information than confusing.

"The admissions room?" Harry asked.

Sirius cast his eyes down and Remus replied, "dead staff, visitors and patients. All of them had been gone for hours, it seems more likely that we have been brought here, now, deliberately."

"Alchemy too, what did you find in Artefacts?" Moody reported and questioned.

"Nothing," Daphne replied to the confusion of others, "no patients or staff. The bunks were empty."

"This grows more disturbing by the minute," Remus inputted, rubbing his chin.

Harry could see the concern on everyone's face, he knew he shared their expression. 'This isn't a simple attack, there's more to this than we rightly know. We must continue searching for answers.'

With a heavy sigh, Harry changed the plan. "The plan has changed, if this attack happened hours ago then the likelihood that there are people to save is low therefore expediency is less important," he said with a pained feeling. "But we still need to find out what happened. We're going to sweep the floors together, methodically, I will not have us picked off in our pairs and disappearing like the patrons of this place. Let's go."

The six of them ascended the stairs, floor by floor, clearing each ward one after the other. The Dai Llewellyn ward, as empty as the artefact accidents ward. The Magical Bugs ward had no sign of contagiously ill patients nor their masked caretakers. On the third floor from the ground, the Potions and Plant Poisoning ward, and its accompanying departments, were ghost towns.

'This is eerie to the point of madness,' Harry reflected on his way up to the fourth floor, 'no place this large should be this empty, I'd be more comforted by corpses than the complete emptying of a large number of people.'

The fourth floor, home to the Janus Thickey ward for long term patients was next. He knew this place to be an ominous reminder of their own mortality and vulnerability. Spell damage so severe that nothing could be done for the victim was a usual occurrence on that floor and apparently wailing could be heard coming from there often.

As they had done with each floor beforehand, Harry blasted the door in, Sirius and Remus entered first checking each corner, Moody and Tonks next fanning out to each side and then Harry and Daphne down the middle. Much like the other three floors, the ward was clear. They moved together, further into the ward, checking beds and bathrooms alike but found nothing. What concerned Harry the most was that there were no signs of struggle, anywhere, as if they had simply disappeared into thin air. He caught Sirius and Remus glancing to the side sadly and followed their eyes to a nameplate that read Frank & Alice Longbottom - Long-term Cruciatus Exposure.

'Friends of theirs I suppose, victims from the first war,' Harry guessed as he soldiered on toward the stairs to the fifth and final floor, a tearoom and gift shop for visitors. The others followed him and climbed the flight of stairs in silence, it was this silence which afforded them the ability to catch the faint sound of voices behind the last door. Harry pressed his ear to the door and listened.

A gruff voice with a heavy Scandinavian accent spoke first, "the aurors have arrived, Lord Voldemort."

Harry's eyes widened at that, 'Voldemort is here? This has just become much more dangerous.'

"Thank you Lukas, you may leave," Voldemort instructed.

There was a pause before the voice, Lukas, spoke again, "the wards…"

"Ah yes," he heard Voldemort remark as though it had slipped his mind. Harry felt the surge of magic from the wards as they were torn apart by whatever Voldemort was doing inside.

Daphne, who had also been listening in, whispered frantically, "he's tearing down the anti-apparition wards."

Harry wracked his brain, 'if we ambush him now he'll be stuck but what will it cost us? I can't kill him, not in the way that it matters and who will have to die for a half measure?'

"We mightn't be able to kill the creature but we could take a chunk of him, injure him so that he fears us as he did Dumbledore," Daphne reasoned, basically reading his mind in the process.

Harry looked at the others, he checked their eyes for fear and doubt but found none. They were either incredibly good at hiding it or incredibly brave, it didn't matter though because he was already convinced. "Tonks, go tell Scrimengour to come straight to the fifth floor, the rest of us will keep him occupied till the cavalry arrives."

Tonks nodded and darted down the stairs. He raised his fingers and counted down from five

Four…

Three….

Two…..

One…

CRASH

The door came off its hinges at the exact moment Voldemort had broken the wards. The bulky Scandinavian man took one look at the six of them bursting into the room and disapparated as his employer commanded. The sight of Voldemort's ally fleeing emboldened them to all fire the nastiest curses they could think of at different parts of the Dark Lord's body.

None reached him; however, a barrier erected a metre in front of their enemy and intercepted all of their spells whilst showing no signs of damage.

Voldemort smiled a toothy smile. "Harry!" he called out gleefully, "so good of you to visit me on such a special day."

"Where are the patients Tom?" Harry asked, ignoring the taunting greeting. Voldemort had fixed himself on one side of the tea shop where much of the seating area was. Although, all of the seats and tables were stacked to one side of the room neatly, suggesting the staff had done so before closing up the day before. Behind him was a large, violet curtain for the windows in the seating area, magically suspended in the air. Both the tea shop and gift shop themselves were closed, meaning the five of them had little room to move should they be attacked, especially with the barrier in place.

The Dark Lord put away his wand, a show of power, and responded, "they are here, with us. You see, I wanted to give a gift to the wizarding world, a token of appreciation for welcoming me back into the community and the patients… they were all supportive of my idea." His speech was only just starting, Harry knew, but that didn't stop him from experiencing the foreboding feeling that a sinister plan had already been enacted. Voldemort liked to gloat but the way he spoke suggested he'd already won. "That is," the dark lord continued, "if you count the absence of refusal, support."

"My godson asked you a question skrewt fucker," Sirius all but growled.

Voldemort's smile dropped and his angry red eyes snapped to Sirius. "Black," he said in disgust, "I should've known you'd kill a perfectly good monologue. After all, your family are dead, your friends are dead, Ms McKinnon… dead, perhaps you'd do the world a favour and die yourself before getting anyone else killed."

Sirius snarled and snapped his wand up to fire a curse but a look from Harry to Remus had the old werewolf restraining Sirius to stop him from doing something reckless. Harry watched Voldemort glide around, the monster seemed to enjoy Sirius' torment so much that he could barely contain his glee and kept himself moving to exert it.

Voldemort snapped his head back to Harry and whilst the smile didn't return, a smirk did as he spoke, "but you Harry, you are the most important man in this room. Without you, my resurrection would not have been so easy, none of my true enemies would be so effortlessly captured and bled. For that I have crafted this gift in your honour."

Harry furrowed his brow in frustration, it was not the backhanded compliment that got to him but the anticipation to find out what happened to the patients and how it pertained to this 'gift' he kept mentioning. "Either stop stalling or stop cowering behind your shield, you're boring me," Harry said, directly insulting him to hopefully garner more information.

Voldemort grew displeased at Harry's avoidance of continuing the charade. "Boring you?" the dark lord asked rhetorically, "perhaps then, this will pique the 'Chosen One's' interest." With a wave of his hand the curtain behind him fell to the flaw, revealing perhaps the most haunting display of savagery that anyone alive had ever seen.

Heads, torsos, legs and arms had been torn apart and magically fused together in some grotesque attempt to spell out a phrase. Blood dripped from open wounds and pooled on the floor beneath the display. Flaps of skin and appendages held onto their host's by single threads of flesh, clinging on in a futile attempt to stay whole. Eyeballs hung freely from their sockets and the dark lord had no compunctions in breaking bones in unfathomable directions to achieve his artistic vision.

"Gods," he heard Daphne mutter beside him.

"Frank…" Remus mournfully spoke.

Harry couldn't tear his eyes from it. Not only did it make him want to vomit but it captivated him in a horrific fashion. At Remus' response he found the head of a man who shared striking similarity to Neville, and a woman's head who was round faced like the Gryffindor boy and knew them to be Neville's parents. Whilst this did give him cause for grief, the head that gave him the most pain was a young girl's, barely a year older than him and a good friend. Katie Bell, a friendly, quidditch crazed girl had met her end in this very hospital and was now part of Voldemort's sick attempt at intimidation.

He ripped his eyes from their bodies, and stared angrily at Voldemort. "You vile worm! You would attack the sick and children before facing us! You're not only weak, you're a coward."

He didn't even allow the dark lord to respond before bringing his wand to bear and summoning an arc of lightning at the shield. Even though there was no visible effect, he continued pounding on the shield with reckless abandon. Another arc joined his as Daphne stood relaxed but with an intensity in her eyes, wand trained on the same spot as Harry. Soon three more followed and the barrier began to strain. With the five of them hammering away at the shield, Harry took a moment to look at the dark lord. An ear to ear grin donned his face, his objective having been achieved, there was no victory here for Harry Potter and they both knew it.

Voldemort's eyes flicked up and his smile faded. Harry turned around and saw the minister and a cadre of aurors enter the room and stop in their tracks as they took in the dark lord's gift for the first time. Voldemort disapparated, and with him gone the shield fell and so too did the magic that held the body parts together. What once read 'Happy Yule' now was a pile of meat on the tea shop's floor.

Harry dropped to one knee and met the minister's eyes, both understanding that this was perhaps the darkest day in recent wizarding history and they had been powerless to stop it.

A/N: Bloody hell this was a long fucking chapter 5500 words ffs

That doesn't mean I didn't have fun writing it, despite the horrific depictions of violence and brutality of course… Anywho, this chapter has been in the works for a longggg time. It was one of the events I first thought of when making the plan for the rest of this trilogy.

Daphne's gift was developed after a few hours of researching Yule traditions and prayers. I want to first apologise if I've offended anyone by the way it's been represented and encourage you to reach out to me so that I don't accidentally do it again. In this chapter, Harry's ignorance and willingness to learn are imposed upon him by myself so feel free to correct me in the reviews or pm me. The phrase he rights is taken directly from a candle ritual but is obviously only part of it.

Voldemort's artistic movement was the core idea, getting there took a while though. I had to search up some questionable things like 'can you scream with a hole in your lung?' and 'what can determine how long someone has been dead for?' I'm definitely on a watch list somewhere.

The graphic depictions of violence was something I wanted to blindside readers with, hence the title name being the only clue as to what's coming. The auror at the front suffered a terrible fate and was inspired by a creepypasta that I foolishly listened to when I was a kid that gave nightmares for months. The rest of it being to torment Harry was an in the moment decision which I ran with. It is so like Voldemort to go through this elaborate plan to torture Harry but then have it benefit himself in some way too. In this instance he gets to terrorise Harry's mental whilst also destabilising the ministry.

I want to thank Blaisenott and Fluffy_mcnutters forfollowing me on twitch. In the coming week regular streaming and a proper schedule is coming back so if you want to drop a follow and come say hi that would be greatly appreciated!

Stay tuned for how the ministry handles this debacle and Harry's reaction to such a terrible Christmas.

Hope y'all enjoyed

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