Disclaimer; Putting Make A Wish references in your fanfics is bad. You instantly receive fifty PM's or reviews asking if you have read it. Of course I've read it! It's one of my favorites, right up there with most of Nonjon's fics.
A/N; Boo-Yah! My fic reaches 100K words! This chapter marks the turning point into a much darker fic. If nothing else, this chapter bumps the rating to a solid M or maybe NC-17. The first scene made me queasy to write…
Monday night found Harry in a hooded cloak paying a visit to his least favorite store. He walked through the front door of Borgin and Burkes and Black locked all the doors out of the room. The windows darkened and became unbreakable.
"I am here looking for information." He almost hissed at the man.
Borgin paled, "What do you need sir?"
"You are going to tell me where I can find Death Eaters."
"Why would I do something suicidal like that?" He started to get his back up. "The Dark Lord protects his own and I aint talking."
"You are going to talk because when I am done with you, you will be begging me to kill you. I need to know where to find your friends, how long it takes and how many pieces you are in when I am done is entirely up to you. In case you haven't noticed, your Dark Lord isn't here, I am."
Borgin nearly pissed himself. There was something in this stranger's voice that said he meant it. He tried to surreptitiously retrieve the wand he kept hidden in his waistband. The moment his elbows came out indicating his hands would be leaving his sides, Harry whipped his hand forward and gave a push with his magic. Borgin was soon spread eagle and paralyzed, stuck to the wall behind the counter. Harry vanished his robes, but left his undergarments, exposing the canvas for what was to come.
"Now, let's hope the answer to this question is yes. Do you have any veritaserum in this fine shop of yours?"
He gulped, "No."
"Well then I guess that means we are going to have to do this the hard way. I look forward to seeing how many painfully cursed objects there are in here and learning how to use them. I'm going to go have a look around and try to get some ideas. Let me know when you are ready to start talking…"
As he walked over to a display case and bent to look, he recalled the second most important lesson the Sadist taught him. Pain can be ignored. Anticipation of pain is scary. But far, far worse was knowing how badly you were going to hurt and feeling good at the same time… The pleasure and the pain, anticipation and desire…. That was true torture. He silently sent his phantoms to do their work while he mused aloud about every object he came across.
Every once in a while Harry would find something particularly interesting and vanish it to his craft space. He shrunk down both book cases and vanished them sight unseen. There wasn't going to be anything truly bad on the open floor, but still, spoils of war and all that. It was almost forty five minutes later before Harry approached the front counter again. Borgin was nearly incoherent at this point, his physical excitement was clear through his shorts, while his mental anguish was clear in his eyes.
Harry held up a wickedly curved goblin fighting knife. "So, first question, where is the entrance to your private collection?"
Borgin mumbled something unintelligible.
"What was that? You're going to need to speak up!" Harry smashed the hilt down with magically enhanced muscles onto his right thumb at the same time a phantom hand stroked his inner thigh and a nonexistent tongue circled a nipple. The bone was a fine powder.
Borgin screamed. Then he cracked, "Move… move the rug… password… parseltongue."
"Thank you, I'll be back in a few minutes. You have fun while I'm gone." He whipped a dirty red carpet aside and looked at the trap door. He cast a few detection spells, and decided to just skip trying the password. The thing was probably trapped. He just shot a blast of pure magic and brushed the saw dust off his robes as the trap door, any traps, and a good portion of the floor were destroyed.
Borgin whimpered pathetically, a large chunk of his floor was now sticking out of the wall just inches away from his two closest friends. He decided now would be a good time to soil himself.
Harry descended the stone stairs and found himself in a well organized basement, Against one wall, two bookcases full of small silver vials flanked a table with a pensieve. Some of the labels on the memory vials sickened him to the core. If he ever felt remorse for what he was going to do tonight, it was now gone and only a cold burning hatred remained. Harry walked over to the only bookcase in the room containing actual books and scanned the titles. Some he already had, some he didn't, and some he wished he had never seen. Vanishing the first two categories, he set fire to the rest. A small collection of truly evil artifacts soon found themselves similarly destroyed. Moving back to the pensieve and memories, he summoned a battered old trunk from the corner and cast the packing charm Tonks had used. All the many vials of memories lined up on trays and put themselves away in the trunk. He vanished the pensieve. That, unlike the rest of the shop, he had a use for. He moved over to the rack of poisoned and cursed weapons, the whole lot disappeared after being shrunk, He grabbed the trunk and headed back upstairs.
"Quite an interesting basement you had, pity something happened to it. Second question, why did you never take the mark?"
Harry didn't even have to pick up the dagger, "I couldn't, I am too public. If I ever did take the Mark, I'd be in a ministry holding cell an hour later spilling my secrets to veritaserum."
"Pity you never thought to have any in your store." Harry shattered his left knee. "That's for making work. Third question, Who do you know that supports the Dark Lord?" His left elbow joined his knee, his member was gripped by a phantom.
Borgin passed out, only to be enervated almost immediately. He began spewing names.
His right wrist exploded in pain and fog crept into his vision. A tongue did some exploring. "All the names."
More names soon joined the list and he began to look frantic as he reached the end of the list. Harry could tell he was desperately trying to think of more names for his torturer. His other knee joined the first.
"Ah-ah-ah! You were about to lie to me. You should have just stopped altogether, slander will get you no where. Now, where can I find Fenrir Greyback?"
Borgin panicked, "I don't know, please just let me go! I'll tell you everything just make it all stop!"
"Ummm… No. Guess then." The fingers of his left hand joined the list, while his neck and shoulders were being massaged.
He suggested a few places. Some were businesses here in the alley, who had a bed in a back room for certain individuals, others were brothels or bars.
"Where can I find Severus Snape?" A hip cracked and he was being stroked suggestively and his twins were being cradled.
"Sp… Sp… Spinner's End."
"Oh how delightfully ironic. Well I think our play time is coming to an end. What do you think I should do with you?"
"Oh please… God… kill me. Make it all stop. Make it all go away."
"Told you I would have you begging for that. No, I have something special in mind for you. You are going to be a message. You will live, but every day of your life will be a warning to anyone who sees you."
Harry started at his feet and worked his way up. The phantoms disappeared, their work done. He broke every bone and demolished every joint he could. Then he arranged the limbs in twisted mockery of human form and started quick and dirty healing techniques. Every time Borgin fainted from the pain he was brought back. When Harry was done, the bones had fused all wrong. The best a healer could do would be to rebreak them and straighten them some. A person could only regrow so many bones. Borgin would never walk again, and would always need someone to feed him and take care of him.
As a final precaution, Harry ripped through Borgin's feeble mind looking for anything interesting. Catching a memory from the middle of Harry's fifth year of Mundungus Fletcher, Harry almost died laughing. He blew the door to the shop safe off its hinges and reached in to retrieve a small jewelry box. He opened it to find a heavy gold locket, with a stylized "S", what luck. He had come for intel, but he was leaving having accomplished so much more. He carefully examined the psychic scent of the horcrux, making sure he could track the others later.
Standing up, Harry called in two items and held them before his face. "Borgin, do you recognize what these are? Oh, good, I see recognition in there. As you can tell, this," He held up his right hand, "is a grenade. And this, is a tank full of propane. We're going to play a fun new game called Arson." He set the tank down in the center of the room and placed the Horcrux on top of it. He pulled the pin on the grenade and placed it atop the Horcrux. When he let go with his magic, things were going to get very interesting. He erected a shield across the store front and passed invisibly through the wall with his prisoner and trunk of perverse memories.
A large crowd of people had gathered around the store. Harry hadn't bothered to silence the room so the whole alley got an earful of Borgin's torture. As he had intended them too of course, he was always careful to keep his voice low and tones quiet. A team of Aurors were trying synchronized curses against the door. Harry and Borgin walked further down the alley before turning to watch.
Harry let go of the grenade. There were two distinct explosions. The first was a loud bang accompanied by a metallic clanging. The second was more of a dull whomp that everyone felt deep in their chests despite the shield, about a second later. Within seconds the building had collapsed into a flaming pile of wreckage. A whispered "Accio Horcrux" and "Accio Locket" proved the deed was done.
"Well my dear mister Borgin, I do hope you enjoyed your night as much as I did. Unfortunately, you are headed to that lovely ministry holding pen we were talking about and I can't let them know who I am now can I? No, mustn't have them think I am actually capable of doing what needs to be done. Obliviate!" The last two hours were gone from his mind.
Borgin was found a half hour later in the atrium of the ministry with his trunk of memories sitting on his chest. The memories alone meant that he would never see the sunshine again, plus they ensured a healthy dose of veritaserum was forthcoming, He was convicted of numerous murders, rapes, and child molestations. He was a truly sickening individual, and no one pitied him his present condition.
In an alley not far away in muggle London, Harry was being thoroughly sick behind a dumpster. He felt absolutely filthy. Stealing a phrase from Albus, he tried to tell himself it was all for the "greater good" but the words sounded just as hollow coming from him as his former mentor.
"Rest well Albus, I got the Locket. Now you can rest in peace, it wasn't in vain. The others will come soon."
Harry slept in the MoM that night, he didn't feel clean enough to walk among the students. He missed breakfast and showed up to lunch looking as haggard as anyone had ever seen him. No one asked what was wrong.
Harry approached McGonagall after his transfiguration lessons were over. "Headmistress, I need your help. Can I count on you to help me without asking why?"
"You're obviously very troubled. You can always come to me for help. I will try not to pry, you've got a lot of weight on your shoulders and I am glad you trust me enough to ask for help. What do you need?"
"Obliviate me. Please erase my memory of everything that happened from dinner yesterday until now. Replace it with me going to bed early and getting up late."
"Are you alright?"
"No, I am not. Please, do this for me. I've got some things written down to clue me in on the important bits, but I need to get rid of last night. Please."
"Just this once. I don't know what happened, and I don't want to know. But from now on, don't get yourself into these situations."
"Thank you Professor, thank you so much…" He hugged her and gave a muffled sob against her shoulder.
McGonagall's heart just about broke. Here was her nice polite boy, who never showed emotion, hugging her and crying… Whatever happened had clearly disturbed him greatly. Reluctantly, she raised her wand. "Obliviate." She left his memories of the last few minutes alone. He would remember asking for her help and her warning not to let it become a common occurrence.
As they ended their embrace and Harry got rid of any stray tears, McGonagall told him, "Mr. Potter, you are excused from classes for the remainder of the day. I will inform Professor Flitwick."
Nodding, Harry left. His transfiguration teacher, Head of House, and Headmistress tried not to wonder what he had done or seen yesterday that caused this breakage of a normally indomitable spirit.
Walking back towards the Common Room, Harry caught sight of two words written on his left hand. The ink was smudged, but readable. It said "Pensieve, Manor." So he changed direction and decided to take his own advice. He idly wondered where he had gotten a pensieve.
He walked into the library of the manor to find he had made a few additions. Two weapons racks, two more bookcases and a small pile of assorted objects in addition to the pensieve on the table. Sending a flick of magic, he noticed that most of the weapons were particularly nasty. Either poisonous or cursed, except for the one item he really didn't expect to see.
He picked up a black handgun, it seemed so out of place amongst the others. Examining it he found a silencing spell in the barrel and action, and conjuration and transfiguration magic in the magazine. When he eventually figured out hot to remove the magazine that is. The whole thing had been strengthened and hardened as well. He was almost paranoid about keeping his finger away from the trigger as he examined it. He knew nothing about guns and he didn't particularly want to learn.
He knew wizards had a very old code about guns, and he wasn't about to violate it. Simply put, it was; DON'T! Except for a few hideously difficult shields (and the shields Lucivar had taught him which were not too hard at all), most magic wouldn't block physical objects. Wizards had developed an extreme paranoia about guns in the few centuries since muggles had invented them. It was bad taboo for a wizard to use a firearm against another wizard. If he did, he may as well use the next bullet for himself. Harry had no intention of breaking that taboo, and decided he would try to find a way to destroy it safely, he could see why it was in the private room even if it didn't have any dark magic.
He eventually remembered why he was there in the first place and proceeded to the pensieve. He entered the only memory in the bowl.
Harry was standing alone in the library holding a piece of bloodstained parchment. The new additions were behind him. The memory Harry looked up.
"Hello Harry, you are me and I am you, we know that. I've got some valuable information for us, but it was very costly to secure. I am going to ask McGonagall to wipe my memory so I wont have to remember getting it. First the good news, we found the Locket. It has been completely destroyed, so don't worry. Now, on to the list of known death eaters we are going to need to take care of… And some locations of interest… Apparently Snape used to live somewhere called Spinner's End. I don't know what or where that is so get Hermione to drag us to the library. Well that's all I need to pass on. I hope this goes well, you really don't want to know where this information came from or how I got it." The memory Harry burned the parchment and vanished the ashes.
Meanwhile in Sarajevo… A U.S. Marine was getting reamed a new one after being unable to account for some grenades and nearly a pound of C-4. His commanding officer was going on an on about the amount of paperwork he was going to have to file to both report the loss and to demote him back to latrine cleaning where he belonged. It was suggested that he find them, yesterday!
A few hours later, a green French soldier who still carried more gear than he absolutely needed was mugged in an alley and stripped of anything even remotely valuable by local insurgents. Within a few minutes they were enjoying either Kraft Dinner or Beef Stroganoff MRE's while the Marine reported to his superior that all missing equipment had been accounted for.