Voldemort: "You think killing people would make them like you but it doesn't. It just makes people dead..."
A vary Potter Musical
Again, this is a Fanfiction of a Fanfiction, all ideas/characters/whatever belongs to Less Wrong and Rowling, ultimately Rowling.
Chapter Six
Detention
News of Harry Potter's success with the killing curse spread quickly throughout the school. At this point, Harry had learned to expect the student body of Hogwarts to know anything he did out of the ordinary the instant he pulled it off. Ah, the wonderful workings of time turners.
So it came as no surprise to him when he entered the great hall, moments after he'd left the Defense classroom, that almost every head in the room was turned towards him, and yet somehow no one had the courage to say anything. Harry pointedly ignored them and took a seat at the Ravenclaw table. At least he could count on no one wanting to talk to him. He really wasn't in the mood. He would have much preferred to sit in his trunk, eating meal bars and avoiding everyone, however, not showing his face after he'd mastered the most deadly spell in the world would have caused more damage to his reputation.
Just as soon as he sat down, Harry loaded his plate with anything that was in front of him and started eating. Any brave Ravenclaw would now know better than to strike up conversation.
After he'd calmed down, Harry had wanted to speak with Professor Quirrell, but the Defense Professor hadn't given him the chance. The door to the little room at the back of the defense class had opened of its own accord, and the Professors voice drifted into the room, by use of the ventriloquist charm, to announce Harry's scheduled time of detention. Harry had enough time to catch the defense professor trudging out of the room, already in zombie mode. He had known better than to approach Professor Quirrell then.
The great hall broke into a whispering buzz when it became clear that Harry was not going to go off on a killing spree. However, those Ravenclaw's sitting closest to Harry did vacate their seats before they had quite finished eating.
Almost as soon as the Ravenclaws left, Hermione slipped in beside him. She drew out her wand and said, "Quietus." She then took the extra measure to lean in close to Harry and whisper. "Can you teach me the killing curse?"
Harry paused in the act of raising his fork to his mouth. He slowly lowered it and turned to stare at Hermione. She looked completely serious.
"I know this isn't the best time to ask, and I'm sorry for doing it now, but I have to learn that spell," Hermione whispered. There was a note of apology to her voice.
Harry set his fork down. "You know I am not authorized to do that," his voice was just as quite as hers. Hermione opened her mouth, but Harry talked right on over her. "No, even if I could, I don't have the time." It was true. With Professor Quirrell's added detentions to Harry's already packed to the brim schedule, he'd have to use his time turner just to eat. And even if he had the time, he wouldn't teach Hermione that spell. If she wanted to pursue it on her own, fine, but Harry wasn't going to help anyone learn that spell. It was too dangerous.
Hermione closed her mouth, but she still bore a determined look and Harry knew this would not be the end of it. However, when she next spoke, her tone was surprisingly gentle. "I'm sorry about what Professor Quirrell did. That was wrong of him."
Harry picked up his fork again, and resumed his meal.
He spent the rest of that evening in his trunk, and the better part of Sunday as well. He studied and practiced spells, doing his best to distract himself from the little hole that was slowly widening in his heart. He called himself nine kinds of idiot, but it didn't help. The hole was still there, like a minor wound, constantly bleeding and not completely painless, and if he didn't do something it'd eventually bleed him dry.
I shouldn't have believed Professor McGonagall, not for a second. Of course she'd paint my parents out to be saints. He should have known that they were weak, selfish, shallow people. He spent ten years of his life working up a horrible image of his genetic parents, not allowing himself to form any sort of attachment to them, so why did it bother Harry so much? They hadn't cared about Harry, not enough to kill Voldemort, even when he gave them a chance to. He must have seen them for what they were. Cowards only making play at being Heroes. Gryffindors…
When time came that evening for Professor Quirrell's detention, Harry was still upset, but did his best to keep his expression collected as he entered into the Defense classroom. He was taken by surprise at the sudden sense of doom. It bore down on Harry the moment his foot crossed over the threshold into the room, and for a panicked instant he considered turn tail and fleeing. But then he saw that Professor Quirrell was not at his desk, but in the back of the classroom where Harry usually sat, and realized the sense of doom might not have anything to do with Professor Quirrell's current mood.
"Please approach the stage, Mr. Potter," Professor Quirrell said softly.
Harry glanced at the Professor briefly before doing as instructed. He could not imagine what was held in store for him. Learning to loose had been an unpleasant experience, but a needed one, and it was nothing compared to their fieldtrip to Azkaban, and neither of those two events were the cause of a detention handed out by Professor Quirrell. This time, the Professor had something planned for the sole purpose of punishing Harry. He really should be more nervous, but his anger had still not quite cooled, so he met the Defense Professors eye with something of a defiant look. His inner Slytherin screamed at him for his lack of tact.
"You know why you are here?" Professor Quirrell asked.
"For scaring people," Harry replied and some of his defiance left him.
"No," Professor Quirrell answered unexpectedly and then he took out his wand and preformed the spells necessary to ensure secrecy. When he had finished he drew his wand in a horizontal line and all around the dais appeared cages and cages of rats, oversize spiders, large spiked and oozing slugs, creatures of claws and teeth and not one of them looked very pleasant.
"These are a collection of pests that I have rounded up about the school. Rather than having the usual crew deal them, that duty has been passed on to you this evening." Professor Quirrell then pocketed his wand and five sheets of parchment appeared before him. His eyes scanned the sheets and he did not look or speak to Harry again.
Harry's mouth was parted slightly in shock. This was to be Harry's punishment for… for he didn't even know what.
"Professor Quirrel," Harry said. "This seems a little excessive."
"You're in detention, Potter. Of course it's not supposed to be pleasant. Now get to work or I shall have to deduct house points," the Defense Professor replied dryly, not taking his eyes from the parchment.
Hopelessly, Harry stared at the caged doomed creatures. He drew out his wand, managing to block off his confusion and now dull anger in preparation for the spell.
"Avdakedavra," Harry said, and the over-sized spider sagged, its many legs curling in on itself.
"Avdakedavra."
The horned slug splatted against the floor of the cage slime oozing over the edge and onto the dais.
"Avadakedavra," and on it went. The creatures didn't have enough sense to be scared. Had no idea that as each one of their brethren died, it brought them one step closer to death. Despite Harry's efforts, he could not help but recall his parents last moments. It's so easy! Harry screamed inside, barely keeping that hot anger at bay.
He'd preformed the spell ten times with pauses before he had to take a break. He sat on one of the cages that now held a dead spider. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt a wild disgust with himself, but it was nothing compared to the hatred he bore towards the Defense Professor in this moment. This was cruel. Completely purposeless. He turned his head over his shoulder, but Professor Quirrell was still occupied with the grading of papers.
Each time Harry preformed the spell, it became harder and harder to keep the anger and hurt off. The hole in his chest was widening and widening and more than just a small amount of blood was spilling from that wound now.
"Avdakedavra." It was so hard to keep the anger at bay. And a thought occurred to him. Why should he? The dark lord had surely been upset when he slaughtered the entire dojo. With the next spells casting, he let his anger boil over, let his rage fuel the spell, while still keeping his intent on killing the animal.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" The spell left his wand, wild and sizzling with power, but was no less effective at taking the animals life. Yet, it had felt different. Harry performed the spell again, and it was not at all difficult to maintain his anger even as his inner Ravenclaw calculated the difference.
It's slower, less precise. Ravenclaw observed.
Harry paused, breathing heavily. He tried to understand why the anger made a difference with the spell. He still wanted to kill the animal and it had still died.
It's the emotion. It interferes with the spell. Ravenclaw said and nodded to itself.
And that was when Harry realized why Voldemort had been able to kill his mother, even when she had stared the spell before he did. It wasn't that she had not cared enough about Harry to perform the spell accurately. It was because she cared so much for him that Voldemort was able to kill her first and that was why he had laughed. She hadn't been thinking about just killing Voldemort. She had been thinking about him, Harry. Her fear and her rage slowed the spell and to Voldemort, a being completely devoid of emotion, could see straight through her weakness and exploit it.
That must have been what Professor Quirrell was trying to teach him.
"I understand why I am here, Professor," Harry said quietly. He just barely kept his voice from trembling.
"The pests are still there," was all the defense professor said.
Harry blinked, now unsure what to think. With his heart in the pit of his stomach, Harry finished off the rest of the creatures. He had performed the killing curse more than thirty times during the detention, and as he killed off the last one he was beginning to feel exhausted. He turned to Professor Quirrell, and opened his mouth, but he spoke before Harry could.
"The pests are still there," he said yet again. This time, he looked at Harry directly, parchment vanished.
Harry stared and when he caught Professor Quirrell's meaning, another wave of disgust ran through him. He now had no idea what the Defense Professor was trying to teach him, if anything at all.
Harry reached into his pouch. "Bottle of gasoline," he said.
The cages tops opened with an easy Alohomora. He used the hover charm to stack the bodies together in another cage. The gasoline was divided sparsely, but it still wasn't enough to burn every single creature. He set fire to the ones he could, placing a bubble head charm over himself to keep the smell off. He Finite Incantatemed the smoke and drifting sparks as a prevention to letting the fire get out of control. When he had finished, there were still about twenty creatures left in their cages. He was having trouble just staying on his feet.
He wished he could just vanish them with a snap of his fingers like Professor Quirrell. Instead, he piled the bodies up again, and this time used an alarming amount of parchment from his pouch, broke three desks, and used the material to fuel a fire hot enough to burn the rest of the corpses.
At the end of it, there were several chard cages and spots of blackened wood along the dais. Harry had let the fire burn itself out. He stumbled to the edge of the stage, and sat down. He glared up at the Professor, his tired mind too slow to even begin to wonder at the purpose of all this.
"That was… an interesting performance, Mr. Potter," Professor Quirrell finally said after several quite moments.
"Are you going to tell me what the point of all this was?" Harry asked, not bothering to mask his anger or his disgust.
Professor Quirrell arched a brow. "I thought you said you knew."
"I thought I did," Harry replied harshly.
"Why is it that you think you are here?" Professor Quirrell asked. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his palm.
"To slaughter and burn over thirty creatures apparently," Harry replied coldly.
"I never asked you to do those things," Professor Quirrell said, the beginnings of that all too familiar smile quirking at the end of his lips.
Despite his exhaustion, Harry threw himself from the dais onto the floor. "You told me to kill them and get rid of the bodies!" he shouted.
That smile broke into an all-out grin and a laugh full of mirth escaped the Professor. It was several moments before he managed to control himself enough to speak, and at which point Harry desperately wanted out of the room. He was beginning to realize there was something really wrong with Professor Quirrell.
"No, Potter. I did not tell you to kill and burn forty two pests. I told you to deal with them. You could have simply brought them to the edge of the forest and let them go. That, by far, would have required less effort than slaughtering and burning them."
Harry's mouth fell open, completely flabbergasted. And after a full two minutes he said, "Well, you certainly didn't do anything to stop me."
"No," Professor Quirrell agreed. "I didn't. But perhaps now you understand why you are here."
Harry looked over his shoulder at the ash covered stage, his expression grim. "To realize there is something really wrong with me…"
"I wonder," Professor Quirrell said, tapping his cheek. "How many other people would have considered doing this?"
Harry swallowed.
Just one.
Truemy the Wise: "Gaa arg nooooo!"
*box tumbles off shelf and CRACKS open*
Truemy the Wise: "The CRACK is unleashed!"
*WARNING* WARNING* WARNING*
READ AHEAD AT YOUR OWN RISK. THIS IS CRACK. I REPEAT. THIS IS CRACK!
Voldemort: "You know Quirrell and I always say you gotta hit yourself where it hurts, wait, ah, that's not it."
Quirrel: " No, no, no, sit down or you're gonna hurt yourself. It's, 'you gotta hit them where it hurts.' Look, kid, people do horrible things to you and there's nothing you can do about it, right?
Haryr: "Right."
Quirrel: "Wrong! When people do mean things to you, you turn around and hit them tenfold!"
Harry: "That's not what I was taught."
Quirrel "Than maybe you need a new lesson. Repeat after me. 'Avada Kedavra'
Harry: "What?"
Voldemort: "A-va-da Ke-da-vra. It means no worries."
Quirrel: "Avada Kedavra! What a wonderful phrase."
Voldemort: "Avada Kedavra! Ain't no passing craze."
Quirrel/Voldemort "It means no worries for the rest of your days. It's our problem-free philosophy, Avada Kedavra!"
Harry: "Avada Kedavra?"
Voldemort: "Yeah. It's our motto!"
Harry: "that's your motto?"
Quirrell: "Yeah. What's the-motto with you?"
Voldemort: "Ya know, kid, these two words will solve all your problems."
Quirrell: "That's right. Take Tom for example. Why, when he was a young wizard..."
Voldemort: "When I was a young WIZARD!"
Quirrell: "Very nice."
Voldemort: "Thanks."
Quirrell: "He found some father lacked a certain appeal
So he cleared the table after the meal."
Voldemort: "They were sensitive souls and hard to send.
It hurt, but every life must come to an end!"
Voldemort Quirrell
And oh, the shame He was ashamed
So I got to changin' my name Really what name?
And people got downhearted Who cares how they feel?
Everytime that I...
Quirrell: "Hey! Tom! Not in front of the kids!
Voldemort: "Right. Sorry."
Quirrell/Voldemort
Avada Kedavra! What a wonderful phrase
Avada Kedavra! Ain't no passing craze
Harry: "It means no worries for the rest of your days!"
Quirrell: "Yeah, sing it, kid!"
Harry/Quirrell
"It's our problem-free"
Voldemort: "philosophy"
Harry/Quirrell/Voldemort
Avada Kedavra!
Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!
Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!
Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!
Avada Kedavra! Avata-
It means no worries for the rest of your days
It's our problem-free philosophy
Avada Kedavra!
(Repeats)
I say "Avada"
I say "Kedavra"
Note: This sillyness was written prior to watching a certain awesome video. Check it out at New Grounds "avada kedavra"
Thank you, Peer Infinity, for the link.