The Prologue - Part I
July 15, 15 years After Godric's Hollow
A cloaked figure stalked through a green, hilly landscape of Yorkshire Dales in the dead of night.
Unknown to anyone but this young man, he walked underneath the cover of a constellation-patterned indigo invisibility cloak — a cloak some suggested to be the most legendary of all given its unparalleled resistance to magical detection and apparent immunity to deterioration. But thoughts of apparel, whether of the invisibility cloak or the obsidian-black, hooded robes he wore beneath, ranked low on the teenager's mind as he approached a staunch stone house enclosed within a heavily warded stone gate.
Never should he have been able to see this safe house for what it truly was, as the gatekeeper guarded that secret in the depths of his soul. Guarded it while withstanding the torments of infamously vicious Bellatrix Lestrange without breathing a single hint.
But the soon-to-be-assassin knew better than his bloodthirsty colleague. Knew that at times, a promise of mercy could break what a thousand torments could not. Understood that the very source of the guardian's impeccable resilience could be converted into an irresistible motivation for betrayal. For Amos Diggory loved nothing in the world more than his son, and would give the world to ensure his safety.
Or in this case, the next generation recruits for the Order of the Phoenix.
Now a mere half-minute from the house gates, the cloaked man drifted back to a night fifteen-and-three-quarter years ago when another two members of the Order thought themselves secreted away by a Fidelius Charm, so unaware of their exposure.
"Voldemort started to gather some followers, brought them over to the dark side," he had been told so long ago. "Anyone who stood up to him ended up dead. Your parents fought against him, but nobody lived once he decided to kill 'em. Nobody, not one — 'cept you."
Much more recently, he learned that death could be a mercy when dealing with Voldemort. And when it came to the Boy-Who-Lived, history's darkest lord showed no mercy.
The sixteen year old took off his invisibility cloak just as he reached the gates, surprising the watchman.
"Who—Harry?" Lee Jordan, a recent graduate of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, exclaimed aloud as Harry pulled down his black hood and shrank his star-spangled cloak to fit within the folds of his dark robes.
"Yes," Harry answered the dark-skinned young man.
"I—where—no one's seen you for months! Ever since…Dumbledore…" Lee stammered.
"Was betrayed," Harry completed.
"So it's true then," Lee murmured somberly, sensing that Harry had a more specific knowledge of the event than most anyone.
"And you?" Lee asked with slight wariness, wisely exercising a degree of suspicion and skepticism to Harry's sudden reappearance after months.
"Got any Thief's Downfall?" Harry suggested while gesturing at the rune-covered three-meter tall stone gate in front of them.
Lee nodded and flicked his wand at the top of the gate, which abruptly ejected a healthy torrent of water down onto Harry. Harry closed his eyes as the stream enveloped him, feeling wonderfully refreshed even as it utterly drenched his robes and made the cool night air seem somewhat chilly.
With Harry very much looking like himself after the sudden bath and sporting no change in demeanor, any suspicions of impersonation, mind control or corpse reanimation dissipated from Lee's eyes.
"HARRY!" Lee exclaimed again, far louder this time, as he enveloped the sixteen-year-old in a very tight embrace.
Harry quickly and genuinely returned the hug. Though he and Lee hadn't been the closest of friends, Lee had been a loyal member of the New Blood Alliance that Harry established during his time at Hogwarts. Lee had even been among those who followed him to the battle in the Department of Mysteries.
Bonds of war trump all.
"We…we thought you lost," Lee whispered once he pulled away. His eyes shone as vibrantly as Harry had ever seen.
"Sorry for the scare?" Harry said with a weak smile.
"All that matters is you're safe, and you're back. The NBA hasn't been the same without you," Lee replied.
"Well, I'm sure Cedric's been able to hold things together," Harry offered. "He's always been a better leader than me…and he's led the Order's recruitment and training of recent graduates for over a year, right? How's that going, by the way?"
"Cedric's doubled recruitment for the Order of the Phoenix in the months since your…in recent months," Lee answered as he unlocked the gate entrance with a complex maneuver of his wand while pressing his left hand against the door.
"Twelve of you then!" Harry exclaimed, his pleasant surprise at Cedric's progress just masking his horror at just how many good-hearted fellow Hogwarts alumni he had been sent to kill.
Or maybe they'll be too much for me, Harry thought in morbid hope.
"I wish there were more of us," Lee said with a worried look on his face. "Recent months have been hard on the Order."
"Amos told me I'd find his training center here when we met in captivity," Harry explained. He failed to mention that the chains that bound him were of a different nature than the literal ones that bound Amos.
"You escaped from Death Eater imprisonment then?" Lee gasped as he led Harry toward the house. "And Amos?"
"I wasn't…I wasn't able to rescue him," Harry admitted sadly.
Harry had hoped to give the elder Diggory a swift, painless death after he divulged his secret. That would have been far more merciful than having Bellatrix avenge her failed interrogations. But, unfortunately, that same sadistic witch pointed out that the death of the base's secret keeper would instantly be felt by all his confidants. They would all simultaneously become the new secret keepers, realize this, and then quickly move to another location and set up a new Fidelius to minimize risks.
"I…maybe I shouldn't have come," Harry said suddenly, briefly wondering if this could possibly give him an out. If, by some magical happenstance, the house magics would suddenly banish him. "I doubt Cedric would want to see much of me knowing that."
"He won't hold it against you, you know," Lee whispered in answer as they approached the house door. "You're like a little brother to him — and believe me when I say seeing you will mean the world to him. He flat out said if the mythical time turner existed, the first thing he'd do is use it to see you."
Any other time, that would have warmed Harry's heart. To hear that now just scalded him.
"Is he here?" Harry asked as they stepped through the threshold into the house, the protective enchantments recognizing him as a confidant of the Secret Keeper. He felt additional ropes of magic scanning his mind for intent, but unfortunately they were insufficient to keep out a master of occlumency.
"He's out, but will be back later," Lee answered. "You actually caught us at a good time attendance wise. We're all here besides Linderina, Eddie, Fred and Oliver."
"Sure Oliver's not moonlighting as Puddlemore United's drill sergeant?" Harry quipped while making a grim calculation in his mind.
Eight targets then, seven once Lee is taken out.
Harry's heartbeat accelerated as dread spread through his entire body as the reality of what he came to do sank in. He had needed Lee to let him into the house, but making conversation with him…
His instinct was to shout at the top of his lungs that everyone in the house had been made and needed to flee immediately, and then make himself scarce.
But where could he go, that Voldemort would not find him with the damned mark? And what would happen when the Dark Lord inevitably caught up? The Gaunt made clear that in spite of Dumbledore's calculations, he would never kill Harry.
"But I can make you beg for death all through the eternity we will spend together, my precious horcrux," Voldemort told him with the coldest of smiles.
Harry received two choices that fateful final day of March. Submit to possibly endless torment as Voldemort's hostage, as the Dark Lord indulged every dark fantasy that did not completely compromise the soul bond Harry shared with him. Or pledge fealty to the Dark Lord, and thus earn a pardon for Draco's failure to kill Dumbledore as well as win the chance to bargain for mercy for muggleborns and reprieves for wizards who previously raised their wands against Voldemort's cause.
But to court any meaningful influence with the Dark Lord, influence that contended with the fanatic blood purists, bloodthirsty butchers and power-crazed bureaucrats who dominated the Death Eater ranks, Harry needed to prove himself a superior agent to almost any of Voldemort's followers.
Orchestrating the second Azkaban breakout and leading the strike on Minister Rufus Scrimgeour pleased Voldemort. Harry had been told that much by the Dark Lord himself. But the Dark Lord remained yet to be truly impressed.
"You wield great power, boy, and your talent with the dark arts ranks among the greatest in my ranks," Voldemort complimented. "But I determined as much years ago. What remains to be seen…is the depths of your devotion."
In plainer terms, Voldemort respected Harry's ability to kill. But he wanted to see who Harry was willing to kill.
"…Harry?" Lee asked while shaking the boy's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Harry said gravely.
"No, I'm the one who owes you an apology," Lee replied rapidly. "You—you've been through such an awful time, I can't even imagine the things those Death Eater scum did to you…" Lee continued with a face of pure compassion.
One which made Harry blink rapidly before tears began to obscure his eyes.
"Forgive me," Harry whispered.
"Harry…Harry?" Lee asked with sudden alarm as an fourteen-inch aspen wand was raised at him.
"Avada Kedavra," Harry whispered. A green beam blasted Lee in the chest, a look of pained betrayal frozen into his face even as the young man's dreadlocks wildly waved as if a mighty gust of wind whipped into the spacious receiving room.
Lee was dead before he hit the floor.
The magics of the house instantly alerted all residents of a deadly intruder, raising them from their slumber and urging them to seize their wands. Harry could hear the commotion in the house even as he wrestled against strong rune-powered wards that sought to constrict his power and mobility.
The wards lasted mere seconds against the raw power of one of the deadliest teenage wizards in history. At the moment of the breakage, all lights in the house ominously disappeared.
Harry walked toward the staircase, which went straight up toward a second floor balcony that would also leave a climber exposed to attacks from above-and-behind as he ascended the final third of steps.
The house so far is well designed for defense against intrusion.
A nearly 1.9 meter, muscular, long brown-haired young man raced onto the balcony, traced a small, aerial triangle with his wand and then stabbed it toward Harry. Before the spell even launched, Harry wrapped a magical shield about himself while leaping into a left-handed backward handspring to avoid a trio of energy-imbued spears that released a grenade-like pulses of power upon impact with the ground.
Before even landing into a crouch, Harry pointed his wand up at the balcony and sent a mighty fireball up at his assailant. The Order of the Phoenix member-in-training deflected the attack, naturally. But projecting a shield to beat away a large surface area plasma blast left him ill-equipped against the near-instant follow up. An equally powerful precision slash across his neck.
Harry's opponent — Roger Davies, former fellow Quidditch captain and good friend — clutched his lacerated neck in surprise before his eyes widened in horror as his brown met Harry's sky-blue.
"Marcus' secret seeker, yes? The fate of my bank vaults lies in your hands today, little fellow."
"We should fly together. I'll even teach you some of my tricks, to make our teams' matches just a little interesting."
"Ever had Swott Malt Whisky? No? Swot will be your favorite word after tonight, mate!"
"You introduce me to Fleur, and I'll give you the perfect in to Cho, pal."
"NBA, huh? Catchy…and sign me up, captain."
Roger slumped against the back wall as two new figures sprang into action. The figure on the left a bright-blonde haired witch of average height and the other a slightly taller strawberry-blonde, short-haired witch — both blue-eyed.
Penelope and Elora, Harry's mind supplied as he launched a magical disarming strike against both of his opponents while conjuring a tight body-glove of defensive magic and projecting a sturdy cone-shaped shield about himself to defend against the spells they hurled at him while bounding into the conflict.
With their strikes falling harmlessly away and the witches too surprised to muster wandless magic, Harry shot two near-simultaneous green beams from his wand to bring an instant end to his opponents.
Harry looked back at the slumped over Roger to see he was, unsurprisingly, still alive and shakily clutching at the wand he had dropped.
Good man till the last, Harry thought as he closed his eyes — preparing to do what was necessary.
Twisting his magic to hurl a lethal bolt against Roger nearly made Harry vomit with disgust. He only succeeded because the thought of letting Roger die by choking on his own blood unsettled him more.
The Boy-Who-Lived then leapt up toward the balcony, ascending both by way of his Olympics-worthy athletic prowess and a minor burst of magical power. At a sudden impulse, Harry twirled his wand about his right-flank while still midair to generate a magical aversion to a particularly powerful slashing strike. He deflected it in such a way it gave him an extra-boost of momentum onto the balcony — particularly the back rail. In an instant, he simultaneously channeled magic into his feet to create powerful sparks around him as well as physical tension to launch into a diagonal backflip away from his assailant. Mid-flip, Harry jerked his wand rightward in perfect execution of a disarming strike.
"Rapid, flamboyant motion will often distract your opponent just enough to leave them vulnerable to Expelliarmus, if you insist on that spell," Remus once advised him.
In his most complex maneuver yet, Harry stretched his power behind him to grip both the tendrils of magic and physical aim of a yet-unseen assailant who meant to blast a chasm into the balcony floor he was about to land on. He swung this assailant's power wide to his diagonal right to instead attack the floor beneath the opponent he had just disarmed.
That opponent — Angelina Johnson — let out a muffled gasp of surprise as she abruptly dropped to the first floor among a cluster of jagged stone fragments. Meanwhile, Harry completed his backflip to land on his left hand, and then pushed off so as to launch in the air parallel from the floor while spinning like a top till he faced the assailant behind him — Katie Bell — just as his feet slammed into her chest.
Having expected Harry to flip higher, Katie's second spell whizzed above Harry's position, striking the underside of the third floor some dozen meters away. The room rocked with the force of the impact just as an all-too familiar poisonous green beam of energy lit the surroundings — and snuffed the light out of yet another Phoenix-in-training.
Poisonous green pulsated again through the first two levels of the house as another beam struck down Angelina just as she collected herself.
Harry's breath raggedly hitched and heaved as weariness set through the very core of his being — a weariness that did not simply emanate from the successive murders of six individuals he had called friends and comrades just a few months ago. The killing curse — one of the darkest manifestations of magic — fused the power of a wizard's magical core with the most malicious cravings of his soul to project a bolt of death. One that, if properly cast, resulted in the immediate cessation of any living organism struck with its power.
With the only concrete method of surviving a potent killing curse being interception of the beam with another living organism, one would think it to be the most popular spell among dark wizards. However, not even Voldemort's Death Eaters typically conjured the spell — especially in pitched battle. A wizard lacking sufficient magical power or malevolence to destroy their target's life force would instead drain their magical reservoirs in a futile gesture. Worse yet, a wizard who could not properly direct the curse once conjured would explode into dark energy and gore.
For that reason, a year ago at the infamous showdown in the Department of Mysteries' Chamber of Death, the two most liberal casters of the killing curse had been Bellatrix Lestrange and ironically Harry himself. But then, Harry had been powered by a hellfire's worth of hatred he felt for Bellatrix in the immediate aftermath of his godfather's death.
"I killed Sirius Black! I killed Sirius Black! You going to get me?"
Now, Harry felt the full weight of the curse's damnation tear through his soul. He sank to his knees, wishing not for the first time to turn the curse against himself.
But a certain presence in his mind chose that moment to remind him why this quick solution was impossible for him. Icy torrents of magic rushed through his being and dispersed the budding physical symptoms of his spiritual exhaustion. Meanwhile, Harry's most pain-and-rage inducing memories inundated his mind without pause.
"AVAADA KEDAVRA!"
"I'll stamp the freakishness out of you if it's the last thing I do!"
"Feral mutt. You will heel this second or I will send you straight to hell!"
"One more yelp, and you will wish you had been in the car with your parents that night!"
"Hunt Harry! Hunt Harry! Make him cry for his mummy!"
"I misjudged you. You are more of a swine than your sire ever was!"
"Try however hard you like, but you'll never have a place among us, mongrel."
"How your muggle-loving mother must regret giving her life for yours!"
"Your lack of discipline will get all who care for you killed!"
"I killed Sirius Black!"
"How many more families will you ruin in your 'hero's quest,' Potter?"
"You're more a danger to your 'friends' than you've ever been to your foes!"
"You're the worst snake of them all. I can't believe I ever thought of you like a brother."
"This path you have chosen to go down…well I'm afraid you will have to continue alone."
"When the time comes, I'm afraid I must ask more of you than any other."
"…to die? No, boy. We shall live together, forever."
"Avada Kedavra."
A magical pulse ran through every inch of Harry's body in reflection of the resolution rekindled within him.
"Thanks, Tom," Harry muttered as he rose to his feet. He couldn't tell if he did so with bitterness, sarcasm, resignation or even appreciation — or perhaps some odd combination of all four.
"Tom" made no comment. Not that Harry needed one. If his closest acquaintance of the past five years could be trusted to do one thing, it was to look out for his self-interest. Which, in what once seemed the greatest of ironies, revolved around keeping Harry alive and intact.
Six down, two to go, Harry counted as he trudged onward.
Projecting his awareness — both physical and magical — Harry determined that his final two opponents remained on the third floor. It also appeared that they would coordinate their attack.
If only the others all coordinated, Harry thought mournfully.
Harry guessed that one of his opponents, likely the one to drive the frontal assault, would be Cormac McLaggen. Though Cormac would only have been eligible for the Order after his June graduation, he had made clear to Harry he intended to join straight away. And no sane person would have turned his wand away — even if his personality was an acquired taste.
Harry walked up to the base of the stairs ascending the third floor, took in a deep breath, and slowly ascended.
A sudden spike in magic gave Harry a second's notice to hurl himself away from a blinding bolt of lightning cast from the top of the stairway. With the pulse of power and boom of thunder masking the assailant's next movement, Harry had only sheer instinct as his guide as he dove against the stairs and clung like a rug.
That turned out to be the perfect move as Cormac whooshed overhead on a broom, because of course Cormac would ride a broom indoors, in a maneuver that would have obliterated Harry's midsection had he been upright or brutally decapitated him had he crouched.
Ignoring the stinging pain from the nose he apparently broke against a corner of a stair, Harry tensed his fingers and toes against the stair corners they clung to and launched himself into upwards flip toward the top of the stairs. However, the instant he landed — perfectly as always — he felt himself suddenly locked into place by an until-then hidden runic spell on the stairs. A blood-based one, from the feel of it.
I should have sensed that. Or guessed it.
A burning sensation ripped through every inch of Harry as he barely restrained a scream of pain. But Harry didn't have time for pain if he was to survive this. He didn't need magic to tell him the Gryffindor Quidditch captain emeritus was coming back for his second attack pass right that moment.
So, leaving himself vulnerable to the rune spellwork, Harry hurled as strong a magical shield as possible behind him a fraction of a second before a broom crashed into it and shattered against it. Most of the splinters flew away from Harry, but a non-negligible shower launched themselves into Harry's back. Surface wounds ultimately, but painful enough to weaken him in addition to the runic attack.
Even so, Harry found it within himself to raise his wand and conjure a shield to counter the spell Cormac blasted down on him as the blond flipped over head. The shield held, but the sheer power of the fireball drove Harry to his knees — not that he could have stood much longer anyway with the attack tearing through his core.
Cormac landed in front of Harry, green eyes lit both by the sparks dancing around them and internal raw power. The wizard stabbed his wand downward at the now-blackened stone stairway itself, seemingly hard enough to shatter the American foot-long piece of wood.
But it was not Cormac's wand that shattered. Rocks flew omnidirectionally as the stairs under Harry erupted. Even more damning for the young dark wizard, a devastating runic attack was activated at that moment — one which mirrored the destruction of the staircase.
"AAAGGGHH!" Harry screamed as most of his bones immediately fractured from within just as a torrent of jagged stone fragments pummeled, battered and tore his body from without.
His broken body fell onto the second floor and crumpled into a heap. Pain encompassed Harry's existence as he wheezed for breath through his bleeding throat and broken mouth. Moans interspersed his grasps at air as Harry felt physical torment as great as that Voldemort — Lord Voldemort — subjected him to in the Riddle graveyard. Wetness welled in his treacherous eyes as Harry alternated between coughing blood and choking on it — all while feeling like he had just guzzled a gallon of gasoline after a merciless, no-magic brawl with Hagrid.
Harry barely registered being levitated until faced with the blazing green fury that was Cormac's eyes.
Maybe I can goad him into offing me, Harry hoped deliriously.
"Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?" Cormac demanded, punctuating his words with a forearm strike to each of Harry's collarbones, a punch to the middle of his sternum, a kick to each of his shins, a vicious knee to his balls and a skull-splitting headbutt.
Harry vomited the contents of his stomach and enough blood to take him to the verge of unconsciousness.
"ANSWER ME!" Cormac demanded as he tackled Harry to the ground. Harry faintly registered his skull crack (again) against the stone beneath him as his head bounced up into Cormac's waiting fist.
For the next few seconds, Harry couldn't see, hear or feel anything. He didn't feel the slightest connection to his body. Unsurprising, as the damage his body had taken in the past quarter-minute should have been as fatal as an Avada Kedavra.
But he just knew all the same he was not on his way to whatever hell awaited dark wizards, nor had he transcended the living plane as a spirit. His presence, immaterial though it felt, still resided in the case that was his physical body — almost as if buried alive.
Yet unlike in the literal case of live burial, Harry presently felt no need to breathe. He floated free of physical sensation, a mercy given how much pain consumed his body. But this escape…was not permanent. Especially if those crouching above his body thought so.
So Harry pressed his being against the shell that was his body and reattached himself with every single nerve ending. He ached to scream at the influx of pain — but his body didn't even have the energy required for that simple task.
"…sense his power?" a female voice just on the edge of hearing asked.
"There's no way that's Harry," Cormac spat out forcefully, but seemingly from a substantial distance despite spittle flying onto Harry's face. "And in some backward universe that it was, he'd want us to kill him."
"He's…right," the Death Eater somehow vocalized.
Or did he broadcast those words telepathically? Either way, Cormac and the mystery woman heard them.
Cormac waggled his eyebrows in a way only he would in such a situation.
"No!" the woman shouted emphatically as Cormac pointed his wand to perform the coup-de-grace.
Bloody hell, Harry thought as his would-be executioner hesitated long enough to be disarmed.
"G-Gemma?" Harry croaked out in surprise when a caramel, freckled face came into view.
She made no answer, instead fixing her hazel eyes down upon his sky-blue in unblinking concentration. Harry felt powerful magic launching from her mind to seek out his darker memories. He resisted, of course, but his defenses fell before the elder student of the mental arts.
"I'm Prefect Gemma Farley, and I'm delighted to welcome you to SLYTHERIN HOUSE."
"Half-breed blood traitors will never be welcome here, Potter."
"There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it."
"Join me, Harry. No one will sneer again at the apprentice of the greatest sorcerer in the world."
"A perfect Cruciatus Curse. My, my, Harry, you have come a long way since our lessons."
"You call yourself a dark wizard? Let me show you the dark arts!"
"That'a boy, Harry. You make your old teacher proud."
"Do you not wonder why Dumbledore fears you knowing your destiny? Our destiny?"
"I am not the one who wants you dead, Harry."
"So all this time, you've just wanted me to die when it's convenient for you?"
"Dumbledore will be at his weakest tonight. Tell your aunt, then wait under my cloak in the Astronomy Tower for my signal."
"Do you, Harry Potter, pledge your life and loyalty to me?"
"Yes, my lord."
Hazel eyes vibrated with shock as their owner withdrew her mind from Harry's. The eyes first burned with anger, but then shifted to a glare of suspicion.
"Quite a bit of information I gathered from a student of occlumency," Gemma bit out sardonically.
Harry looked up blankly from his should-be corpse.
"Don't give me that," Gemma scoffed. "So some Slytherins made your first year or two in the house rough. Dumbledore played fast and loose with the truth with you, and Voldemort offered you power. That's all it took?"
"You bastard…" Cormac snarled, having retrieved his wand and one word away from delivering a fatal curse.
"He's lying!" Gemma interjected just in the nick of time.
"He killed them!" Cormac shouted while waving an arm around.
"Something's very wrong here, and we need to make Harry tell us what it is," Gemma insisted.
Sometimes the stereotypical Gryffindor approach really is better, Harry wished he could say.
Cormac's eyes flickered between his desire to immediately kill a violent enemy or talk to a former friend.
"Talk," Cormac snarled out after a few seconds while jamming his wand against Harry's throat. "Quickly, or I'll change my mind."
Harry felt his heart begin to palpitate as a dam he was holding within him began to crumble. While Tom hadn't been able to directly control Harry's conscious will for years, he often manipulated Harry's subconscious instincts and involuntary impulses — among which were natural fight-or-flight responses to imminent danger.
Harry's body may have been broken, but he felt the hurricane of power roaring within him. Demanding to unleash itself against the wizard who presently jeopardized Harry's life.
Harry forestalled Tom's efforts by thinking of all the good memories he shared with his fellow Quidditch seeker. The reckless seeker stunt competition they had ever since their first Quidditch match — a never-ending contest much to Madam Pomfrey's chagrin. Their joint adjustments to athlete practice regimens, popularity and parties as preteens. Their work-out buddy routines, and all the ways they "played harder." The flamboyant and often dangerous dares they undertook. The recreational potions business they, Ron and Eddie ran during the Triwizard tournament year — until Snape caught them. Their many aerial sparring matches. The time Cormac led the sack of Umbridge as cover for a strike team to meet Harry at the Ministry. And all the lady-related woes they made fun of each other for.
Unfortunately, Tom very much insisted on defending himself, and Harry numbly began to feel his body vibrate and shake from a constipation substantially worse than when Draco hexed him to hold in his urine till his bladder burst. Combined with his near-fatal injuries, Harry barely found it within himself to speak without releasing his hold on his power.
"I'd…rather die," Harry ground out with as defiant a stare he could muster.
Hopefully, hopefully he'll understand.
Sensing a shift in the blond in front of him, Harry bound whatever power of his he could spare around Gemma to slow down an intervention. Cormac was one of the few Harry had trained in the Dark Arts in his final year at Hogwarts, and one of the very few he knew could pull off the Killing Curse. But with Harry seconds away from losing control, there'd be only one chance.
"Avada Kedavra!" Cormac shouted.
The familiar acidic green light sprang out of Cormac's wand directly onto Harry's body. The room lit up as a gust of wind rustled through the corridor. Harry felt his body go numb from the onslaught of power as lacerating pain spiked all through his being.
But for all the power that slammed into him, there was a lack of sufficient intent guiding it.
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, or hoped he whispered, just before a hellish torrent of flame exploded from his mouth directly into Cormac, transforming him from a handsome warrior to charred husk before Harry could turn his eyes away. Gemma met the same dark fate.
As a whirlwind of power erupted from his mouth and appendages to birth a living storm of flame, Harry knew his mission for Lord Voldemort to be complete. Even if the full contingent of Phoenixes-in-training had not been present, the sudden and dramatic murders of eight would be a nail in the coffin of the disintegrating Order of the Phoenix.
It had shattered Harry's heart to murder each one of the men and women he did today. Friends, comrades, soldiers — they didn't deserve such an end. Especially since Harry inspired most of them to sign up for the fight against the Dark Lord. Dumbledore Jr., his friends and foes at Hogwarts often called him. If only they knew what that really meant.
"What if things don't go according to your damn plan? Again!" Harry had roared at Dumbledore a few months ago.
"Then I trust you to adapt, as you always have," the aged wizard replied calmly.
If Lord Voldemort proved unwilling to kill Harry, it would be up to the Boy-Who-Lived himself to see to the destruction of the Dark Lord's seventh and most powerful horcrux. For so long as any one horcrux survived, the Dark Lord remained an immortal demigod. The destruction of his physical body would be but a temporary setback, as proven fifteen Halloweens ago.
Yet as an anchor for Lord Voldemort's soul, it was fundamentally against Harry's nature to destroy himself. And any time Harry's life was endangered, the dark power within him would defend itself in any way it could. Always had, always would.
Harry needed the help of a wizard powerful enough to survive this to complete his final mission. Even better would be if that wizard was protected from direct harm by Harry due to an Unbreakable Vow made just an hour ago.
Such a wizard appeared in the midst of the roaring inferno that was now spreading throughout the stone house.
"Harry?" Cedric gasped with a myriad of emotions — mostly positive — until his blue-gray eyes fell on Harry's exposed left forearm.
The choked gasp that followed somehow managed to be heard among the crackles of the stone-melting flames.