Chapter Five

The Order

"We're all going to die," wailed Tonks theatrically.

"Bloody hell," said Fred and George in unison.

"Constant vigilance!"

Fletcher, meanwhile, inconspicuously fled the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and booked the first ticket to Majorca he could get his hands on.

Harry had just finished telling the Order about the existence of the horcruxes, including everything he had learned from Albus Dumbledore. He explained about his intention not to return to Hogwarts, his impending quest, which had been cut short by the arrival of the horcruxes, and the fact that Dumbledore himself had been on death's door the night he was murdered.

"And you say you killed one of them?" McGonagall asked sharply, wanting to confirm the number of Voldemorts remaining.

Harry nodded. "Two, if you include the diary."

"Wow, you really duelled You-Know-Who," Ginny said, wide-eyed and with an indecent amount of awe shining in her brown eyes. "And here I thought you were a goner for sure."

Harry just gave her a wan smile and thanked whatever deity had been doing its thing that he broke up with her when he did.

"So that means that there's the locket, the Huffelpuff cup and the mysterious object," McGonagall mused thoughtfully.

"Well, actually," Harry said, shifting a bit and then pulling out the locket. "Found this puppy here in the house."

Eyes widened even further, if that were possible, while Moody remained invariably stoic, the only indication of his excitement the nervous spinning of his blue eye, which after doing what looked like a little dance, came to rest on the locket.

Moody whistled. "That is one seriously dark object, Potter."

Harry just gave the paranoid ex-auror a beatific smile. "A beauty, ain't she?"

Moody grinned, which was a truly ugly sight.

"How does one destroy it?" Fred asked, his eyes shining with malice, his voice uncharacteristically somber. No doubt they were thinking back to Ron and his fate at the hands of Raven.

Bill silently asked to examine the object, which Harry handed to him.

After several seconds of study, and some gentle tapping with his wand, Bill just frowned. "Yes, I see it's dark. There's a disturbing amount of energy inside it, but there doesn't seem to be much else. A mild confundus charm, and an intertwined Egyptian locking spell. Password protected, no less."

bill handed the locket back to Harry, who took it and hefted it about from one hand to the other. "Yeah, well, I reckon there's not much point to it really. I mean, they weren't really supposed to be found. The diary was a pretty easy kill. All it took was a jab with a pointy object."

"So how then do you do it?" Moody asked again, his eye having returned to its omnidirectional swiveling.

"The same way you destroy any soul," Harry said nonchalantly. "The killing curse."

Silence followed Harry's pronouncement as each individual in the room turned to him and gave him a hard, stern glare.

"What?" he asked innocently, knowing full well the dilemma that presented itself when considering the killing curse.

"You can't just use a curse like that, Potter," Moody explained, almost gently. "To do a thing leaves a mark on the soul. You don't want that. None of us do."

"I saw Shacklebolt use the imperius," Harry countered. "And that's soul magic."

"Aye, we've all done a little bit," explained Moody. "But it's not the same. You can recover from it. You can take counseling, talk to people. Take time off work. There's no returning from the killing curse."

Harry nodded. "I see." And then, to everyone's astonishment, he held out the locket so that it was the center of everyone's attention and then, wandlessly and with little effort, he charged a killing curse in his palm, which hummed and let off an eerie green light as it slowly seeped into the locket, dissolving the soul fragment that existed inside.

Everyone watched, mesmerized and terrified into speechlessness. Seeing the killing curse just sitting in someone's palm like a toy bobble was too much for Tonks, who fled the room in a fit of hysterics. The energy of death, the most lethal and feared energy in the magical world fizzled and crackled as it lay idle in Harry's steady grip. The lights in the room seemed to dim as if shying away from the terrible energy that Harry now wielded with superlative control; an energy whose light matched the colour of his eyes - a fact that was becoming startlingly clear to every inhabitant of the room.

"Harry," McGonagall breathed, her gaze transfixed by the sight of the curse. "Harry."

"That's not possible," Ginny said, still stupidly wide eyed. "Is - is that possible?"

With a silent command, Harry winked the killing curse out of existence, the overhead lights returning to their normal brightness, the feeling of having your very essence being leeched slowly dissipating.

Harry then proceeded to gently place the locket over his neck and tuck it under his shirt. "Two objects left," he said solemnly. "Two objects and then Voldemort himself." The only response he received for his words was a continued silence permeating the entire house, save for the ticking of a grandfather clock located in the drawing room. He suspected that there was very little left to say anyway, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be around when it was said, so, marshalling his Gryffindor courage, Harry did the only thing he could think of. He fled with as much dignity as he could muster, and eventually found himself in Sirius's room - the master bedroom, which was the only one he could be certain was empty. A quick once over with cleaning charms and he was ready to flop into bed and let his mind slip into the sweet and dark world of dreams.

Time passed with little event for Harry. He surprised himself by going ahead with the defense lessons, though, given his altered form, they had to be modified somewhat. There wasn't a single Order member around that could take Harry on in a duel, and it became painfully obvious that increasing the numbers of combatants was a futile attempt at handicapping the Chosen One. He just didn't fight like them anymore. Ironically, he found himself throwing himself deeper into the theory, in part to fine tune his newfound preternatural control over magic, but also to help him understand just what exactly he had become.

Harry supposed he could have just summoned Dobby and asked, but he wasn't sure he wanted to be in the presence of the diminutive elf. There seemed to be something intimate about soul sharing - something ancient like blood magic. Like the magic that saved him on that Halloween night so long ago, and Harry wasn't quite prepared to permit himself to suffer the emotional repercussions of what Dobby had done. Occasionally, he wished he had simply been left for dead; especially when he ran across many of the acute reminders of his two best friends, neither of whom were there to provide the support he so desperately needed.

It had taken only two days for Harry to find himself cornered by Fred and George and Ginny, all of whom wanted answers. He could have just apparated away, but he knew that it would have been the height of cowardice to do so right in front of them, and besides, he needed to maintain a close working relationship with others while he stayed at headquarters. More importantly though, he found he was craving human contact and wanted to at least try to reforge bonds with others - bonds that could take the place of the void that now existed within him.

You wanted your sanity back, he admonished himself. Did you think it would be easy?

"Can you tell me about it?" Harry found himself asking timidly. "About Ron."

Fred and George exchanged a glance while Ginny just stared intently at Harry. The quartet had managed to garner some alone time in the kitchen, where they could speak privately and enjoy a cup of tea.

"Bloke came. Got through the wards. He came for Ron specifically," George spoke, trying to get the facts out as quickly and as painlessly as possible. "He was a tough little bugger, You-Know-Who." George glanced off to the side as his memories took him to a different time and place. "It's funny you know. It all happened so fast, I could hardly keep up. First I heard the alarms, and then we all came rushing into the kitchen - we were playing a game of pick up Quidditch." He shook himself as if to unburden himself of the guilt, before continuing. "The scene we came to was a mess. Ginny was limping and trying to get away from this bloke. Couldn't have been more than twenty-five, I reckon. Before I knew it, there was a stunner coming for us, and, well, you know. We're Weasleys. We've got pretty short tempers, so I pretty much just started unloading with standard defense spells. Reckoned we could overwhelm and break his shield, but it didn't happen. I don't think even a minute passed before we realized that mum was..." George leaned back and it appeared that he wasn't going to say anymore.

Fred silently elected to take up the explanation. "After mum's death, we knew we were pretty much beat. She had thrown herself in the way of a curse that Bill called a nasty bit of magic. It would've surely killed Ron. Nothing we did seemed to get through his shields, and he was adept at reflecting magic back at us. I remember trying to summon a knife in his direction, but he effortlessly took control of it and sent it right back at me, and with enough force that I barely had time to get out of the way. It actually slashed my bicep."

"It was all I could do to keep standing," Ginny added softly, glancing down. "He was so... powerful. And skilled."

"It didn't help that he could basically ignore half our spells."

"Stunners didn't work at all."

Harry nodded. He had had the same experience with Nagini.

A moment of silence descended upon them, where the Weasleys gave Harry a moment to digest their words, before they began expecting him to open up. He wasn't exactly sure where to start. It all sounded so miraculous that he survived, except, of course, he realized that he in fact had not survived.

"I died," Harry blurted out suddenly, though he found he wasn't sure where to go with that line of thought. he glanced down at his mug as if to divine the answers from it. He was thankful that none of the Weasleys were sporting incredulous looks or that they were prodding him to hurry up. Eventually, he said, "I watched Nagini kill an Order member one night." He shook his head. "I was furious, I think. and tired. I think I realized then that I had little choice but to fight. I'd spent ten days trying to learn advanced magic so I'd become some kind of great fighter, but I found that it just wasn't happening. No amount of time was going to save me, so I figured I'd just go out and meet my fate. I collapsed the wards. After that, the battle started. It was just me and him. Another shade, only it was fused with Voldemort's familiar. We played some apparation tag. It wasn't long before Nagini got the better of me, and I had to basically flee. She was a superior dueller by far, but I got lucky at one point and managed to destroy her wand. That evened out the score a bit, even though I was sporting a stab wound to the stomach and a broken leg. She was about to kill me when I had a spurt of accidental magic that apparated me to the elementary school roof. We fought some more, and a couple of kids got - well, I think muggles call it collateral damage. From there, I managed to get the upper hand, sort of, but Nagini apparated. I followed her apparation signature, though I'm not quite sure how I did that. Then I found myself falling, and I hit water. She'd apparated to the Hogwarts lake. Apparently the anti-apparation boundary doesn't extend quite so far over it." Harry shook his head as he recalled the feel of the squid's slick tentacles around his torso. "I had dropped my wand at some point and crawled over to Nagini to strangle her, but she got the drop on me and bit my fingers, on my good hand, crushing me. It didn't help that I'd broken my glasses and a shard had embedded itself in one of my eyes. Then, she bit down on my throat and ripped it out. I was acutely aware of what was happening at that point, but it was all too quick and there was little I could do."

"What happened?" Ginny asked as Harry took a sip of his tea and paused.

"I died," Harry said, repeating his earlier phrase. "Not sure after that. I think maybe Dobby used necromancy. I think I might be a horcrux."

Another silence ensued, but it wasn't long before Fred asked, "Did you go after the Malfoys?"

Harry just nodded.

Fred seemed to struggle with himself for a moment before finally grinning, "That was a pretty cool mark you left."

Harry looked up to see Ginny and George nodding. "Bloody scary is what it was," Ginny added.

"yeah, how'd you do it?" George piped in.

"What're you talking about?" Harry asked bewildered.

"The mark over the Malfoys," Fred explained. He summoned an old Daily Prophet from the dustbin and threw it out in front of Harry, who spread it out so they could all see the Dark Mark floating in the air. Only, instead of being the usual green, it was a deep, polished gold. Harry just smiled. "I'd no clue it worked so well."

"What did you do?"

Harry just shrugged. "I let my magic do what it wanted, actually. There's something instinctual about elf magic. Sometimes magic happens around me, like it's manifesting my unconscious desires. I'm not even always aware of it." Harry pointed to the article. "I was feeling somber and a little bit nuts after torturing Draco. I figure my magic was just expressing itself."

"That's pretty creepy, mate," Fred said.

"Yeah, You might want to see a therapist about that," George added.

"Well, that's kind of why I came here," Harry explained. "I needed some familiar faces. You know, like a grounding wire for all this negativity."

"Ah, I see," Fred intoned thoughtfully. "What you're saying is that you missed fire whisky and Quidditch." Both the twins stood while Ginny just rolled her eyes and mouthed the word, Boys. "Come on. We can play a quick game on the roof of the manor. There's repulsion charms and everything."

"Really?" Harry asked, standing and being led away. He glanced over at Ginny and beckoned her to join them, which she did, however reluctantly.

Yeah, Harry thought, climbing to the top of the most ancient and noble house of Black and enjoying the feel of the morning sunshine as he was passed an old Cleansweep. Maybe things'll be all right after all.

By the time September 1st had rolled around, Harry found that he was in pretty good shape to be going out on his own. The school reopened to everyone's delight, and Ginny was allowed to go back for her sixth year. Harry politely declined, not wanting to be around so many students and not really having a use for the classes anymore. Instead, he elected to take a job at the twins shop, which he suspected Arthur was thankful for, as he was a formidable soldier and could double as a bodyguard for his reckless sons. The twins wanted to pay him, of course, either a wage or in a percentage, but Harry just shrugged and said they could work it out later. Maybe after the war. To Harry, it seemed a bit silly to squabble over coins when their very lives hung in the balance, though he understood all too well the deep-rooted pride that was entrenched in the Weasley psyche.

Diagon Alley, Harry discovered, was a sight for sore eyes. Having finally learned a sophisticated enough combination charm-transfiguration to fool aurors and Death Eaters alike, he was able to navigate the busy streets with relative freedom. He hadn't realized just how calming a stroll down the central wizarding district was to his nerves. Not even the war, which had admittedly taken the edge off the hustle and bustle of the place, had managed to rob Diagon Alley of that frenetic energy that he associated with many of the stores, not the least of which included Quality Quidditch Supplies and Flourish and Blotts. To his amusement, a new broom was now on display on the front window, and a small mob of what Harry guessed were second and third years had their faces plastered to the glass in what looked like a vain attempt to kiss it. He just shook his head at their antics, vaguely remembering a time from his own childhood where he and Ron had done something similar.

"Two hundred and fifty miles an hour," one of the kids was practically drooling. "And a built in legilimancer for precision handling..."

The charms work on that must be extraordinary, Harry mused, smoothly gliding past the Quidditch shop and ducking into Knockturn Alley. The twins, having discovered Harry's most impressive ability to scare the trousers off everybody short of You-Know-Who himself, had transformed him into their personal dark arts errand boy. It wasn't so much that they couldn't handle themselves in Knockturn, as it was the simple fact that Harry's intimidating persona was a boon when it came to haggling over price. It hadn't taken long for Harry to earn a reputation as a guy not to be fucked with, given the easy way he tended to dispatch people around him.

Even as the light from Diagon dimmed, and the sounds of busy traffic disappeared, he could see the forms of hags and dark arts peddlers scurrying towards the shadows to make way for him. Harry just smirked. Life was good, it seemed.

Harry entered a little apothecary off the beaten path. Most people tended to purchase their potions, but because Fred and George were in the process of modifications, they always had to do things by scratch. Making Harry secure their ingredients ended up serving the function of acquainting Harry with the eccentricities of many obscure, often barely legal items. Today, however, Harry was on the hunt for a particularly rare item. Even more so than usual.

"What can I do you for, stranger?" the wizened old hag across the counter inquired.

Bertha, the shop owner, Harry had quickly discovered pretended not to know the individuals who came into her shop. Even the regulars like Harry, which had, at first, thrown him off a bit. He wasn't sure whether it was stupidity or paranoia that drove her to behave this way, but he didn't care. "Phoenix blood," he said solemnly, already putting down a pouch filled to the rim with galleons. He supposed that it was the money alone, which she was eyeing greedily that kept her from shrieking in terror and leaving him alone in her store. Phoenix blood was notorious for cursing those who dared to handle it.

It was rumoured that only the most foolhardy and the most desperate ever bartered in such things, which made Harry wonder if Voldemort had ever made use of the substance. The uses for phoenix blood, correspondingly, were few, since most people dared not go near it, let alone experiment with it. Harry had actually spent two full minutes trying to dissuade Fred from searching for the product, but eventually conceded. He wondered if they had always been so reckless or if it were the deaths of their youngest brother and their mother that now drove them. For reasons Harry couldn't quite articulate, he prayed it was the former.

"There ain't nowhere in the isles, you gonna get that, boy," Bertha wheezed, already fingering the galleons. "This be mine just for talkin' about it."

Harry nodded. "Of course. that's yours for talking about it. I understand." Harry then snapped his fingers, and a vice formed around Bertha's neck. "The only problem is, galleons ain't no good to a dead witch."

Understandably, Bertha's eyes widened with surprised horror.

"So," Harry said casually, still using his most innocent, most conversational tone, "I expect that this conversation, for which I'm paying dearly, bears fruit. For both our sakes." With a twitch of his fingers, the vice tightened just a little bit.

Bertha squeaked.

"Come now, Bertha. Do not keep me waiting. Speak, or I will forever silence your tongue."

Bertha folded faster than a cheap hooker with a five dollar bill. "There's three places I know of where ya might find such a thing. The Dark Lord's rumoured to have a drop all to himself. They say he keeps one around his own neck at all times. They say he got it from Dumbledore's own phoenix once. The second drop belongs to an Estonian potions master, but whether he's got it still's another question."

'Name?"

"Taavi," she wheezed. "S'all I know of him."

"And the third?" Harry asked impatiently. None of her information was proving very useful, and Harry found he didn't like that. His psychotic side was feeling most aggrieved.

"Ya can take it from the source," she said, nervously fingering the clamp that was restricting her air flow. "Ya know, the ruddy birds 'emselves."

Harry raised an eyebrow at this. "Is that so?" Harry asked. "And how exactly am I supposed to get my hands on a phoenix? They have a tendency to apparate, assuming I even find one."

"There's a place!" Bertha managed as the vice grew ever tighter. "I heard of it once. Where the phoenixes go. Dozens of 'em, there are. Hundreds, even. The Phoenix Well, it's called. I swear."

"And where is this place?" Harry asked.

"Dunno."

Harry rolled his eyes and, feeling rather charitable towards the stooped old hag, he vanished the vice and said in clipped tones. "Go procure me some boonslang skin, compliments of the house."

Bertha scurried away to one of the far shelves, and returned promptly with a jar full of the substance. Harry snatched up the entire jar, despite Bertha's protests and walked out of the store. In truth, he had no use for boonslang skin, and wondered what the twins would do with such a thing. Still, he didn't care. He was feeling vindictive and decided that poaching her supplies a bit would be a good compromise between doing nothing and outright killing her. Besides, he was confident that the money in the pouch compensated her sufficiently.

When he got back to the store, Harry walked straight past the front counter and to the back room, where he slammed the jar of boonslang skins down on the worktable where Fred was working. "Phoenix Well," Harry said. "That's her bloody advice. Catch a Goddamned phoenix."

"Mmm," Fred said, still avidly focused on his work. "So go catch a phoenix, then."

Harry just spent a moment staring stupefied at Fred. "And how, pray tell, am I supposed to get there?" Harry asked, using the same clipped tones that he used with Bertha, only now they were meant to signify incredulity.

However, Fred did not seem to notice and simply replied, "Apparate."

"Apparate!" Harry said, raising his voice and slapping himself on the forehead. "Fuck me in the ass! Why didn't I think of that! I must be the biggest, sodding idiot in the universe. Apparate!" Harry just turned around and walked out of the twins' work room, still talking to himself. "Who the fuck knows how to apparate to a place that doesn't exist? What a load of bloody bullshit."

Harry, now having re-entered the main storefront, just stared about idly as kids made a last rush for the various knickknacks that they would need before school started. Glancing at a nearby clock, Harry noticed that it was already ten thirty, which meant that they had less than thirty minutes to make it to King's Cross. Harry wished he could say that they all looked so small, but, given that he himself was a mere five feet five inches, many of them were actually quite close to his height. Despite my ability to regrow entire limbs, I can't even score an extra couple of inches, he thought glumly.

Don't think about that, he admonished himself. You're Harry bloody Potter. You could have sex with half the chicks in this one horse town. He even noticed that Verity, the clerk, was eyeing him in a way that could only be described as leering. Unfortunately, his virility seemed to be at an all-time low. Not that it had ever been that high to begin with.

Harry went about doing his daily activities at the store front, which included stocking shelves, spying for shoplifters, covering the cash register when Verity had to go powder her nose. September 1st came and went with a distinct lack of events.

It wasn't until nearly three weeks later that something even vaguely interesting transpired.

Harry was sitting down to a morning cup of tea when the Daily Prophet landed on the kitchen table at Grimmauld Place.

"Hey," Ginny said, popping into the kitchen and snagging a blueberry-lemon muffin. "What's new in the world today?"

Harry shrugged and continued to scrutinize the grain of wood that composed the table, all the while sipping his tea daintily. He couldn't even muster up enough interest to ask why she was home for the weekend.

She bent over and let out a gasp, which, to people who didn't know Ginny very well, would have claimed was overly dramatic. Harry, however, just continued sipping his tea.

"Don't you even care what I'm gasping about?" Ginny demanded, eyeing Harry from the periphery of her vision as she tried to observe the love of her life while satiating her curiosity with the news article of great importance.

Harry just said. "Did it occur to you that maybe I just ripped the information from your feebly protected mind?" Harry inquired.

"You didn't!" Ginny exclaimed, aghast at the thought of having her privacy invaded.

"No, I didn't," he said, shrugging. "I just don't care."

"Hmph," Ginny said, fluffing the paper conspicuously and angling it so that Harry couldn't join in on reading the article with her. "The Harry Potter I knew would care about important events in the world."

"The Harry Potter you knew had the IQ of retarded fish," Harry countered. "Besides, I'm sure if it's important it'll reach my ears eventually."

"If you must know," Ginny said, as though Harry's words were an invitation to begin explaining the article. "The Ministry was attacked."

"Ah," Harry said knowingly. "Wondered when the old codger was gonna get around to that."

"You're such a smart ass, Potter," Ginny replied. "Don't you care a bit that nearly twenty aurors lost their lives? Sturgess Podmore included."

Harry set his tea cup down and turned his full attention to Ginny, who, to her credit, refused to back down. "I don't actually know Podmore very well, you know. I assure you, the news of any death pales in comparison to the deaths I've already had to suffer through. Not the least of which was my own. Besides, Podmore couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. What do I care if he's dead? He's probably more useful to us as fertilizer, anyway."

Ginny just stared at Harry dumbfounded, as if seeing him for the first time. Finally, she blinked as though to clear away a persistent memory and said, "You wouldn't happen to care to go for a bite to eat, would you?"

Harry thought about it and said, "Sure. I've got a craving for fish and chips."

"That's muggle food?" Ginny asked, not having heard of it before.

Harry nodded. "Yep. Wickedest stuff in the world. My cousin lives on the stuff. That and Johnny Walker."

"Isn't he horribly obese?"

Harry grinned. "Uh-huh."

"Cool." Ginny went and changed her clothes, and the pair went off for a friendly lunch.

"Now, Harry," Mad Eye Moody was saying, "There's a number of ways that you can get information out of a reluctant prisoner." Moody then proceeded to grin a really disturbing grin. "We're going to skip all that namby pamby veritassurum crap and move right on into the good stuff. Chances are you're not going to have a rare and expensive potion on hand anyway - certainly not one that could just as well be used against you if you got caught."

Moody drew his wand and aimed it at an animated dummy with distinctively sallow skin. "Razurro." Immediately, the skin began to peel away from the dummy's face, one layer at a time. "The great thing about this spell," Moody explained, "is that it takes its time to work. The pain grows steadily worse, and it requires little effort to maintain once the spell's made contact with the intended target. Also, the spell's not so excruciating that the victim can't talk while they're suffering. Unlike the cruciatus, which, as painful as it is, this spell allows you to converse with the victim while they are in the throes of a steadily worsening agony. that way, your victim, er, I mean, prisoner, doesn't have an opportunity to recuperate physically and emotionally. Another upshot is that the spell will eventually cause death, which tends to unnerve vic - I mean prisoners. They almost always start talking with a curse like this."

"Hmm," Harry said noncommittally.

"What, you're not impressed?" Moody asked, his voice tinged with incredulity.

"No, it's not that," Harry said quickly. "I was just wondering if there was a spell version that simulated veritassurum-like effects. Maybe something like that coupled with a pain curse like this. You know, a two-pronged attack."

Moody paused to eye Harry speculatively. "You know, I don't think anyone's ever really thought of that. There was once a spell used to induce soothsaying, but it fell out of favour. It tended to have the effect of inducing people to say things that they thought the caster wanted to hear. It made the spell unreliable. But you know, the same holds for torture, as well. You inflict enough pain and eventually, you can get a prisoner to confess to just about anything. Doesn't do you much good though."

"Is there a reason we're not using veritassurum?"

Moody nodded. "People can learn to evade questions under veritassurum, and even go so far as to provide misleading information. It's cost us on more than one occasion. Surely anyone with the Dark Mark will know how to tell half-truths."

Harry furrowed his brows in concentration. "But Dumbledore used it on Junior at the end of my fourth year. It worked fine then."

Moody nodded. "I doubt Crouch had much to hide at that point. He was probably bragging as much as anything."

"yeah, he did seem to gloat over how well he'd fooled everyone."

"Precisely. If you had asked questions about You-Know-Who's whereabouts, he probably would have given a useless answer. I suspect that Dumbledore didn't even bother asking."

"No, he didn't," Harry said, casting his mind back to that eventful day so long ago.

"At any rate," Moody said, "There's more to teach you, so I think we should move on. Obviously, you can drum up any number of ways of inflicting pain on your enemies, and they will all have their advantages and disadvantages. Experience is the best teacher in this regard. I want to draw your attention to the lead up. Often, when you have prisoners, you can inflict grievous psychological harm that will prove far more effective than outright physical harm. Here's a nice curse. It's a variant on the incarceration hex that you are no doubt familiar with."

Moody swished his wand upward and then brought it down with a snap. "Corpus tordum." Ropes flew out of his wand and hog-tied the dummy. "For a little extra persuasion, you can do the following," Moody instructed. He hung the dummy up by a hook, so that one of its arms was dislocated as it was forced to carry its own body weight with its arms and legs behind its back. "And then there's this if you want to get nasty." Moody laced the ropes with fine shards of glass. "Or this." The rope transformed into barbed wire. "Now your prisoner will be forced to spend minutes, or hours or days in discomfort."

"Isn't that going to be extremely painful?" Harry asked.

Moody nodded. "You want it to be. Any competent wizard will be able to induce a bit of wandless magic. By keeping them in constant pain and subject to blood loss and other moderate wounds, you will be draining their magic reserves, which will be forced to mend the worst of their injuries. This will ensure that you don't have prisoners up and escaping every chance they get. The alternatives are much more expensive, ranging from lots of aurors, dementors, magic dampening fields, etc. But those things don't have the added bonus of driving your prisoners to divulge their secrets. And that's why this method is so effective. It's cheap and serves two purposes."

"Right. Can't I just learn legilimancy?"

"Legilimancy's for pussies, Potter," Moody growled. "Torture the little fucks. Trust me. I know what I'm saying."

"Er, okay," Harry said, still dubious. He wasn't quite sure, but he suspected that he was actually pining for the tutelage of Severus Snape. I wonder if anyone around here knows legilimancy, Harry thought. That would be really cool to learn. Not that Harry didn't find torturing people worthwhile. He just wasn't sure he was prepared to torture people with the same artistry that people like Moody and Macnair were fond of doing. Is it so hard to just want to get the job done? Harry whined internally. He briefly considered going out and finding another Death Eater to torture into giving up the information he so desperately wanted. If only I knew where Voldemort was hiding. Harry shook his head to dispel the thought. It did no good. If a pansy like Draco wasn't going to give it up, there was no way a hardened Death Eater like Snape would.

"Anyway, the Minister has finally approved the new plan for Azkaban inmates," Moody was saying, a wistful expression on his face that told Harry whatever plan Moody was referring to would not be pleasant.

Driven by an inarticulable, morbid curiosity, Harry asked, "What plan is this?"

Moody glanced down at Harry, his electric blue eye fixating on him for a second before returning to its restless spinning. Moody then waved a hand at the hog-tied dummy. "That," Moody said with satisfaction. "Minister Scrimgeour has decided that the Ministry can no longer afford a strong auror presence at Azkaban when so many are needed here. He's already amended the Convicted Prisoners Act. Torture is now lawful and will quickly become the norm for prisoner treatment." Moody proceeded to smile his disturbing smile as he said, "Azkaban will be feared once more. The spilt blood of its prisoners will see to that."

Harry couldn't help but feel a chill run down his back at Moody's words, and he found, to his dismay, his mind wandering to the image of Stan Shunpike, the incompetent, acne-riddled wizard with bad teeth who would become one of those made an example of. It reminded Harry of Sirius Black, his late Godfather. It was a distinctly uncomfortable comparison though he wasn't sure why. He wasn't particularly interested in advocating on behalf of the weak and the down-trodden. Harry Potter had enough troubles without dwelling on all the things that could count as injustices in the world. Still, in his mind, a chain reaction had begun. Not only did images of Stan's stupidly smiling face and inane chattering fill his head, but so did the image of Percy trailing behind the Minister at the Burrow during Christmas, and the image of Scrimgeour at Dumbledore's funeral, Umbridge's sickly sweet smile, and the scars that had once been etched in on his hand.

Harry pursed his lips with distaste.

"Moody," Harry cut in, not caring what memory of blood and mayhem the old man was revelling in at the moment.

"Yeah, Potter?"

"Teach me everything I need to know to storm Azkaban prison."

If it were possible, Moody's grin just got a whole lot more disturbing.