Title: The One True King
Author: Shara Lunison
Beta: Batsutousai
Rating: M
Pairings: eventual HP/LV, JP/LE, HP/everyone, ever
Warnings: AU; OoC; character death; pseudo Lion King crossover; dark, insane, promiscuous, Slytherin Harry; pseudo incest; more as they happen
Disclaim Her: Character death and torture ahead!
~Don't You Believe?~
During Easter Break of Harry's fifth year, Severus left the school to receive the Dark Mark from Lord Voldemort. With him were Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange, Amycus and Alecto Carrow and Alymer Avery.
Harry could scarcely concentrate on his OWLs study during that week. He found himself drawn to the darkest denizens of the castle. There were several seventh years whose presence he suddenly found it comforting to sit in. The dungeons became even more of a haven as he explored the dark depths in search of a dark spot to rest his soul.
Had he been a mudblood, he would have been biting his nails.
When Severus finally returned, pale and drawn, Harry was ready to snap from the stress. He restrained himself with a monumental effort, following Severus and the others into the sixth year dorm so he would be the first to see. Regulus looked after them curiously, but didn't seem as excited or concerned as Harry felt.
As soon as the door had been shut and locked, Severus bared his left arm so Harry could see and touch the mark. It was still red and puffy with the newness. It looked painful.
Harry moaned and fell to his knees. He hadn't been this close to the Dark Lord's power in raw form since that Christmas ball at Malfoy Manor in his second year.
"What was it like? What did he have you do?" he finally managed to breathe.
Severus sucked in a breath of his own, then paused for a long moment as though unsure of what to say. The Lestrange twins, Carrow and Avery had frozen on the other side of the room and were giving Severus rather dangerous looks.
"It's a secret," Severus finally said, reluctantly.
The others resumed motion, and Harry sighed. "I understand."
Severus gave him one of his rare smiles. "You won't have to wait long. You turn sixteen in the summer, unlike the rest of us. I've heard rumors that the Dark Lord intends to single you out."
Harry struggled to breathe. If he only had to wait until his birthday… three months. Three months until a piece of the Dark Lord's magic was a part of him. What would it be like? He stroked his fingers across Severus' mark, shivering at the magic sparking under his fingers.
Severus shivered as well, and pulled his arm away abruptly.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked. He couldn't see himself. He couldn't know that his eyes were droopy and hooded, like he had been partaking of certain magical drugs and was suffering from withdrawal.
"It throbs when you touch it," Severus whispered.
Harry stood, an apologetic expression making the drugged look disappear. "I'm sorry, I forgot that it probably still hurts."
Severus just stared at him for a long moment, then nodded.
Harry ran a hand through his hair and turned towards the door. It was late. Now that his curiosity was satisfied, he suddenly felt exhausted.
When Harry had left, the other four marked boys surrounded Severus and asked him exactly what 'it throbs when you touch it' meant.
~Memories~
At midnight on July the thirty-first, nineteen seventy-seven, Harry was called before the Dark Lord and asked to serve.
He entered the room that Lucius, masked and cloaked, directed him to enter. Dozens of other masked and cloaked figures filled what should have been a ballroom. At the other end of the room, on a short dais, was a throne-like chair on which sat the Dark Lord. He was not masked. Nor was he cloaked. The Dark Lord sat in splendor, like a prince—no, a king. From the artistically disheveled black locks on his head down to the polished shine of his boots, he was perfect.
The first thing that Harry noticed was that the man had changed drastically from their last meeting. Gone were the melting features, the unhealthy pallor, and the disfigured nose. The eyes were the only things that had remained the same. Still a crimson red, and slit-pupiled like a snake's.
"Harry Potter…" breathed that figure.
Harry forgot how to breathe himself. He descended the short flight of steps into the room, and walked across the room to the Dark Lord's feet on autopilot.
When he stopped, he realized that he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Should he kneel? Would a bow suffice?
He met the Dark Lord's eyes and a sense of amusement assaulted his senses, followed by a clear image of himself, bowing.
Harry followed the order without thought. He had already known the Dark Lord employed Legilimency, but feeling it was another thing entirely. The foreign thought flickered in his mind, at once sharper and duller than his own. Would it be the same if it weren't Lord Voldemort's thought? He somehow doubted it.
"Harry Potter," the Dark Lord said again, louder this time. "The one who has waited. The one who has wanted. My little lost lamb has returned to me. What is it you seek?"
"To serve," Harry gasped. Was there anything else?
"That is all?" the Dark Lord asked, raising one aristocratic eyebrow in question.
Harry took a deep breath to deny that he wanted anything else, then paused to think. His entire being had been focused on serving the Dark Lord the past six years, but before that…
"Ah…" the Dark Lord smiled, and Harry's breath was stolen away once more. "You see, Harry, there is always something else. And that is why you come to me. Because whatever it is you desire, I can grant it to you. And in return, I ask only for your service. Will you tell us? Tell us what it is that you want, Harry Potter."
"The Potter family," Harry said boldly, "I want them dead. And I want the birthright that has been denied me."
Unintentionally, an aura of dark energy erupted around him at the thought. He had set aside this desire for too long, and only now was he reminded of the strength of his hatred.
Several of the Death Eaters closest to the dais tensed, drawing their wands. Lord Voldemort halted them with a single raised hand.
"Yessssss…" he hissed. "I can feel your hatred for them. Such delicious dark magic you possess, dear Harry. I wonder what you can do with it?"
"Allow me to prove myself, my lord!" Harry begged, nearly falling to his knees before he remembered himself.
"Yes…" the Dark Lord said again. "Do you know how I choose my Death Eaters, dear Harry? Do you know how our numbers prove themselves worthy?"
Harry met Lord Voldemort's eyes once more. He wanted to be sure the Dark Lord knew he had discerned this answer on his own, without Severus telling him. "Murder."
The Dark Lord chuckled softly, relaxing back into his throne. "In the simplest sense, I suppose. But it is not simple murder that I ask of you, dear Harry. It is vengeance! It is power! It is conquering death!"
Lord Voldemort surged to his feet and Harry started back half a step before standing his ground.
"You wish to see your family dead. So here is your chance at vengeance. Go forth now, and kill them. My Death Eaters will accompany you, to witness the deed and to help you should trouble strike. Return here when you are finished."
Then the Dark Lord turned away, walked behind the throne, and disappeared through a door that had been concealed there.
Harry bent forward in a bow until he was sure the Dark Lord was gone, then straightened and turned to the crowd of Death Eaters. Thirteen had moved forward to join him while his back had been turned. He recognized, through familiarity, the forms of Lucius and Severus. The others, he suspected, were the first five who had been raised with Lucius, Severus' five year-mates, and one other whom he couldn't name.
Lucius held up a length of silky black rope—a portkey. The circle of Death Eaters plus Harry all came close enough to touch it. Harry looked up at those white-masked faces and smiled the wolf's smile. "To Potter Manor."
~A Question of Honour~
They arrived with a lurch. Before Harry could even think of contemplating getting so many foreign persons through the wards, Lucius and the unknown thirteenth stepped forward with wands raised and began dismantling the ancient wards entirely.
Harry realized the mistake he had almost made at once—had he altered the wards to accept the Death Eaters, it would have been obvious to the Aurors that a family member had given them admittance. And since the only living relatives were himself and James, and James was a Gryffindor while Harry was a Slytherin and disowned to boot…
He filed the note away in his mind and waited patiently next to Severus for the wards to be lowered.
"Are you ready for this?" Severus asked very quietly.
Harry nodded. "I've been waiting for this moment my entire life."
"I understand," Severus murmured. "When I was marked…I killed my father. Mother followed him a few weeks later."
Harry looked at the white-masked face of his best friend and then reached out to pat him on the arm. Severus was also staying with the Malfoy's that summer. When Harry had asked why, Severus had only told him that his parents had passed away. He had seemed withdrawn and quiet as he said it—Harry had been suspecting for weeks that there was more to the story than his friend had been saying.
A shower of golden sparks shimmered in the night air as the wards fell. Lucius immediately erected anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards. It would make it harder for them to get out, but it meant their victims could not escape and the Aurors could not enter directly into the property should they be alerted early.
The Death Eaters waited for Harry to take the lead, and he felt adrenaline surge through his veins as they entered the Potter grounds. It was much more modest than Malfoy Manor. The house was within easy viewing distance of their entry point, and took only a few minutes to reach at their steady trot.
The windows were dark. The front door was unlocked. Harry silently ascended the main staircase and the Death Eaters ghosted swiftly after him.
He checked James' room first. It was empty, and he wasn't surprised. It would have been a stroke of luck to find his entire family home at the same time. But he wasn't disappointed that James was apparently sleeping over at Remus' or Peter's house along with Sirius. After all, James had barely begun to suffer Lily's love after Harry had raped her.
His parents' bedroom was the master suite at the very end of the hall. He slipped up to the door and cautiously opened it. He wouldn't have put it past his father to be lying in wait after hearing some disturbance. But when he peered into the room, Dorea and Charlus Potter were sleeping soundly in their bed.
Harry turned to the Death Eaters arrayed around the door and held a finger to his lips. Then he entered the room and raised his wand. A quick incarcerous and his father was bound from neck to ankle in ropes. He used a levitation charm to move the man out of the bed and into a chair near the window. Then he turned his attention to his still-sleeping mother.
Charlus came round quickly and immediately started to push at his bonds. Harry hadn't bothered to cover the man's mouth, so he was treated to a scathing diatribe.
"Who's there? What is the meaning of this? Get out of my house! Get out at once!"
Charlus' shouting woke Dorea, and Harry snapped out an expelliarmus when his mother reached for her wand on the nightstand.
The woman sat up and peered through the dark room in Harry's direction. "James?"
Harry scowled. "No, mother. Your other son. Harry."
Her face closed off, and Harry braced himself for what he knew she was about to say. "I have no son named Harry. James is an only child."
He couldn't even fault her for it. He had been disowned. Pureblood etiquette decreed that he was no longer a Potter.
"And for that," Harry said quietly, "I will make you pay with your life."
The Death Eaters chose that moment to start entering the room, and Harry was gratified to see the stubborn expression on his mother's face morph into fear. Charlus was too bull-headed to see what was about to happen, but Dorea Black was more than able.
Harry briefly debated on what curse he should use. Should he torture his mother? Or should he give her the merciful death that a true Black deserved?
He decided on a mix. And the easiest method he could think of was the simplest:
"Crucio!" he cried. The spell slammed into his mother's body, jerking her back against the headboard before she started screaming and convulsing.
"Dorea!" Charlus screamed. "Stop! Harry, stop!"
Harry ignored both his mother's anguish and his father's cries for him to stop. He concentrated on the dark magic filling his veins and he held the spell, and held it, and held it. It took three minutes for his mother to become incapable of screaming. It took five for her to be driven mad by the pain. It took ten for it to kill her, blood running from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Harry finally released the spell and then turned to his father, who had watched in horrified silence when it became clear that Harry wouldn't stop.
"What do you want?" Charlus whispered, when he could bring himself to meet Harry's eyes.
Harry cocked his head to the side. A slightly mad smile was on his lips, and his pupils were blown from his use of the Unforgivable. "What makes you think I want anything?"
Charlus gaped. "You must! Why would you do this, if you had no goal? We're your family!"
Harry scowled, and raised his wand. A flick of the tip and the ropes binding his father disappeared. Another flick and the man was slammed against the wall beside the window, arms and legs spread apart. "I have no family. I was abandoned the moment I was born. The people I lived with until I turned fourteen fed me and clothed me, but they have never been my family." Harry gestured to the Death Eaters still standing around the room. "They are my family. More of a family than you ever tried to be, father."
Charlus Potter stared at him, his jaw working. Harry gave him no time to speak. "Centum pugionis!" he concentrated fiercely on the dark spell, and one hundred daggers appeared in the air, rushing across the space to pierce his father's flesh at his direction. In seconds, Charlus was held to the wall only by the daggers ringing his body. As he hung there, gravity itself started the true torture as the daggers slowed dragged through his skin, muscles, tendons, and eventually bone as he slid down the wall an infinitesimal fraction at a time.
There were a few appreciative murmurs from the Death Eaters—it was a difficult spell to control to that degree.
"Membrum!" Harry snapped next.
Charlus had screamed when the daggers first struck him, and he continued to make pained noises as they slowly cut through his body. Now, as he felt the burning sensation start in his fingertips and toes, he began to scream desperately for Harry to stop, to have mercy.
"WHEN DID YOU HAVE MERCY ON ME?" Harry yelled, moving close enough to stare Charlus directly in the eyes. "YOUR OWN SON! WHEN DID YOU EVER SHOW ME COMPASSION? WHAT RIGHT DID YOU HAVE TO TREAT AN INNOCENT BABY LIKE A MURDERER?"
"Please, please!" Charlus gasped the word over and over. By now the burning would have worked up into his arms and legs. It left no physical sign of its passing, only a violent twitching of the muscles similar to the Cruciatus.
"You made me like this, father," Harry whispered directly into Charlus' ear. "You brought this on yourself. I hope you die regretting that mistake."
He stepped back, studying his work. Then he cast one last curse, "Exta expellare!"
With a sickening squelch, his father's entrails were ripped from his abdomen and strewn across the floor. Harry made sure they were cut clean from Charlus' body, then stood back to wait. The daggers continued their work, and the burning continued in its path, moving steadily towards the brain and death.
It took only seven minutes, and then Charlus Potter was dead.
Harry grinned. It was done. Except for James, who could wait, his vengeance was complete.
A new idea occurred to him, and he turned to the Death Eaters to ask for their help at last. "I want to clean up this mess and place them in the bed. Can we make it look like nothing happened?"
The masked figures nodded, and before he could think to help with the process, it was already half done. The blood was vanished from Dorea's face, and she was settled back under the covers. Harry replaced her wand on the nightstand while another Death Eater levitated Charlus into the bed. A stasis charm was placed on both bodies, so that they would stop bleeding. All evidence of what had been done was removed from the wall beside the window, and the entrails were Vanished.
When they were done, Harry stood beside the door and nodded with satisfaction. When James returned home, he would have no idea something was wrong with his parents until he touched them.
"Can we bind the Dark Mark spell to activate when the door is opened?" Harry asked, practically rubbing his hands together.
He could hear the smile in Lucius' voice when he answered, "Of course, Harry. I must say, the Dark Lord will be impressed."
Harry couldn't help the pride he felt. That was clearly Lucius' way of saying he was impressed.
The spell work complete, they left the house as they had entered, and returned outside the edge of the property. Lucius lowered the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards and raised a semblance of the wards that had once covered the property in their place. Nothing would be noted until the Dark Mark was raised above the house when James discovered Dorea and Charlus' bodies.
Sated, they portkeyed back to Malfoy Manor and the Dark Lord. Harry felt a tingle starting in his skin. Finally. Finally.
~This is the Right Time…Once in a Lifetime~
Once more Harry walked the length of the Malfoy ballroom to stand before Lord Voldemort's throne. All of the other Death Eaters who had been present before were now gone. Behind Harry followed the thirteen Death Eaters who had accompanied him, and when he stopped in front of the dais they arranged themselves in a semi-circle around him. Here was their place of honor—to witness the marking of their newest member.
Lord Voldemort stood, a long, thin wand of bone-white wood held in his left hand. "Harry Potter has returned. Tell me, Bella, how did he perform?"
A figure stepped out of the circle behind Harry and came to stand beside him. It was the unknown thirteenth who had aided Lucius with the wards. When she spoke, Harry recognized who it was.
"He did admirably well, my lord," said Bellatrix Black. "Dorea and Charlus Potter are dead by his hand, and through his cunning the attack and their bodies will not be noted until his brother arrives home to discover the deed." She bowed and stepped back into the line as Harry once more became the sole focus of the Dark Lord's attention.
"Excellent. I have always held high hopes for you, dear Harry. Ever since you stumbled into that salon three years ago. I owe you a boon for that day, which we will discuss in private after you have been marked."
Harry's eyes widened, and he bowed low, murmuring, "You are too kind, my lord…"
"You did me a kindness that day," Lord Voldemort said softly. "It is only right that I return one in kind."
Harry rose slowly from his bow, and met the Dark Lord's eyes. In them he saw his own image, as a boy of twelve years staring in childish fascination on a face too terrible for many to behold without cringing away. "As you say, my lord," he said slowly, a faint trembling starting in his fingers. His stomach flipped uncomfortably and he wondered if he was somehow nervous to be getting the dark mark now.
Then Lord Voldemort began descending the dais and Harry forgot his discomfort.
"Show me your left arm," Lord Voldemort commanded, loud enough for the entire room to hear.
Harry carefully unbuttoned his shirtsleeve and rolled it up above his elbow. The skin on his arm was unremarkable and pale, blue veins clearly visible at his wrist.
The Dark Lord took that wrist gently in his right hand, and pressed the tip of that bone-white wand against the flesh on the inside of Harry's arm. Harry could feel the dark magic beginning to gather there, and he shuddered at the feeling. His blood was pulsing in time to that dark beat, and he struggled to listen to what the Dark Lord was saying.
"You have proven yourself worthy of becoming my Death Eater. Bearing my mark means that you will forever be bound to me. Wherever you are in the world, I will find you. Whenever I call for you, you will feel it.
"I require absolute obedience of my Death Eaters. If I tell you to do something, you do it. If you fail to complete a task I give you, you will be punished. And if you defect from our ranks, you will be hunted down and killed.
"Knowing all of this, do you still wish to serve?"
The unspoken message was clear. Should Harry say no, he would be killed on the spot. But he had no intention of turning back now—or ever.
"I will serve you forever, my lord," he said firmly.
Lord Voldemort smiled, and Harry's stomach did that strange flip again. Then the dark magic was gathering against his left arm and he looked away from those crimson eyes to watch the spell being cast.
The Dark Lord spoke no incantation, but within moments a black cloud of magic was shaping itself against Harry's skin. It took on the form of a skull with a snake emerging from the mouth. The image sharpened, and then the burning began. It was a like a thousand needles piercing his skin all at once and all in the same spot. A thousand needles that were glowing red-hot with the fires of Hell.
Harry gritted his teeth and bore the pain. He refused to scream. This was the most momentous occasion of his young life, and he wanted to remember it with pride.
Then, as the dark magic snapped into being, the brand on his arm complete, something happened. Harry would later remember it only as an overwhelming surge of the Dark Lord's magic through his body, touching every essence of his soul.
The Death Eaters who witnessed the event would remember how Harry Potter threw back his head and screamed, a thick current of black dark magic connecting him to the Dark Lord. The feel of that magic was so strong that it caused all thirteen of them to collapse.
And the Dark Lord would remember the feeling of his magic melding and twisting with another's before Harry Potter floated off of the floor of the Malfoy ballroom and a pulse of pure magic exploded from his form, shattering every breakable object in the room.
Lord Voldemort would be the only one to remain conscious through the entire event. And he would be the only one to understand what had happened.
-o-0-o-
A/N: Just to warn you, next chapter Voldemort is going to be incredibly out of character. And the next chapter, as well. He's still him—he's not going to turn all soft and mushy just yet—but he's VERY confused. Also, I skip large gaps of time in this fic so I'm only showing the highlights. Just keep that in mind.