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Harry Potter and the Perversion of Purity

By ACI100

Book 4: TBD

Chapter 4 : The Blackest of Tales

July 26, 1994

Black Manor

2:12 AM

A strong breeze blew off the water and whistled against the mountain, rattling the cell's black bars. The smell of summer flowers drifted through the openings between them, punching a small hole in the pungent stench of age and rot.

"You look troubled," Grindelwald said from his place on the cot.

Harry paced back and forth as the warlord leant back and watched him. "I can't beat Dolohov," the young boy said at last.

Grindelwald cocked his head. "One of Voldemort's followers, I presume?"

Harry grunted. "I'm not sure what his role is, but he's the best duellist I've ever fought."

"How does he duel?" Grindelwald inquired. "What is his style?"

"I don't know how to describe it. Everything he does is perfect. Every step, every wand movement; everything's just… sharp."

"Is his natural inclination toward offence, or defence?"

"Offence," Harry said at once. "His offence is just so hard to deal with. There's no time to breathe, let alone counter."

"That is probably the case because of a lacklustre defence."

Harry snorted. "I can't imagine any part of Dolohov's style being lacklustre."

"Do not misunderstand me," Grindelwald instructed. "I do not mean lacklustre when compared to most witches and wizards, but relative to his own offensive capabilities."

"I guess that makes sense," Harry admitted after a moment's pause. "The best chance I had was when I surprised him with Ignis Potentia. I thought I had him for a second, but when he countered it, it went downhill fast."

"Then you must force him on the defensive."

It required immense effort, not rolling his eyes. "And how do you suggest I do that?"

Grindelwald tapped his fingers on his knee. "How have you been attempting to do so thus far?"

How was he supposed to answer that? "I don't know. I've looked for openings, then attacked. That's always worked for me before."

"You cannot always wait, not against certain styles or levels of skill."

Harry felt the anger rear, but he forced its head back down. Grindelwald was not intending to drive him mad, it was just his way. "So what should I do, then?"

"Make your openings." A smile tugged at Grindelwald's lips as his student glared. "Trading spells is not always enough. Study the duels I fought against Albus. Your Occlumency should be potent enough to replay them clearly."

Harry closed his eyes and ran through both duels. "Conjurations," he muttered.

"Variables," Grindelwald corrected. "A duel is simplistic when it is nothing but curses against curses, shields against shields. The more seasoned duellist will win. You are not a duellist."

Harry rubbed at his temples. "Thanks."

"You are more — a wizard who will one day change the world. They cannot aspire to be you. You are above trading simple spells. Introduce variables. Conjurations, transfigurations, element-based offence, Legilimency attacks — the list of possibilities sprawls ever on."

"Conjurations seem the most doable right now," Harry said. "When you say element-based offence, you mean things like fire spells or the lightning conjuration?"

"They are options, yes. A sufficiently skilled wizard can learn to bend the elements. You have seen both Albus and I do so before — not only using incarnations of hatred."

Harry ran a hand through his knotted hair. "I think I'll start with trying to work in more Transfiguration," he decided. "I don't even know where I'd start with element-based stuff."

"Then I believe you have your next project." Grindelwald leant forward. "I cannot allow this gap in your arsenal to persist."

Two days later…

Harry released a relieved breath as the chiming of a nearby clock jarred him from his calculations. It felt as though his mind had melted into a single lump and then grown overrun by mould.

"That will suffice," Crouch said, closing the book he had been reading and placing it on the desk between them. "Any questions?"

Too many. Crouch was a genius who specialized in archaic magic — Runes, Arithmancy, magical theory — Harry was learning all of this from him, but his teaching style was crude. Harry would be given a brief lecture, a pile of reading material, and some notes to help him along. They would then reconvene some days later and Harry could ask questions.

Abstract magic… The two words reminded him of the puzzle too complex to be solved. Or is it?

"What is it?" There was a sharpness in Crouch's voice.

"I will direct you, but not lead you," he had said earlier that summer. "I have little time for people — they're the world's most effective waste of time."

In for a knut, in for a galleon, Harry decided. "Any time I get near a dementor, they back down. I told one to leave twice on the train and it listened both times. I hovered above a crowd of them on the Quidditch pitch and they all glided off." Crouch's expression was unreadable. "I've asked Dumbledore about it and tried doing my own research, but I haven't been able to find anything. I was wondering if you had ideas or explanations."

Harry was careful to avoid the word guesses. "I do not guess," Crouch had snapped two weeks back. "I calculate the probability of potential outcomes and judge accordingly. That is science."

"Dementors flee from your presence?" Harry nodded and Crouch's face remained blank. Not the natural sort of blank, though. There was too much strain. "That is anomalous," the straw-haired man admitted. "Are you capable of casting the Patronus Charm?"

Harry shrugged. "I've never tried."

"Describe to me your psychological state prior to the first meeting? Were you depressed? Did you feel generally unhappy?"

Harry cast his mind back. "Not really," he said slowly. "I was angry about Black and wanted revenge, but that was about it. I felt all right other than that."

"Were you thinking about Black during each meeting you had with the dementors?"

It was an outrageous question, but Harry dragged up the memories and combed through his recollected thoughts. "I was during the first one," he admitted. "I thought it was Black for a minute; I shot a curse at it and thought I'd killed him when it hit."

"That could partially explain the first instance. Dementors care nothing about humans but for our emotions. They feed on our happiness. If we are void of that, we are of no interest to them."

Harry furrowed his brow. "So you think that it left because there was nothing to take?"

"No," Crouch corrected. "I think its impacts on you were minimized because there was nothing to take while you thought only of Black."

Harry dismissed the idea out of hand. If that was the reason, then every Azkaban inmate should have been left alone once they had been drained. The only question was whether Crouch was concealing better theories. "Then why do you think it fled?"

There were others there, correct?" Harry gave a single nod. "So there was emotion to feed off, regardless of your unsuitability. Yet it is curious. What about your other meetings?"

"I was angry during the other two. The dementors were bothering my friends both times, so I snapped."

"That could explain their lack of impact on you yet again, but it does not explain why they backed down. That is an anomaly I have no answer for."

"No answer?" Had Crouch ever lacked an answer, or at least the prospect of finding one?

Crouch's lips thinned into a straight, stern line. "No answer."

"Do not make me repeat myself," was one of the first things he had ever told Harry. "Repetition is redundant and redundancy is wasteful."

Harry exhaled a deep breath and rubbed at his temples once free from Crouch's presence. The man all but bred tension and their lessons left him feeling like a spunge that had been wrung out too hard.

"You smell fatigued."

Harry slowed his stride and let the serpent slither closer. It probably reported everything to Voldemort, so he maintained his best manners when it was nearby. "I am," he replied in Parseltongue.

Nagini's tongue flicked out, licking the air as she wound her way up Harry's legs and around his shoulders. "Take me to the gardens," she hissed into his ear. "I will await my master there."

Harry strode off toward the gleaming staircase. It was only a couple extra minutes and Nagini often had valuable insights to offer up. "Is the Dark Lord not here?"

"No," Nagini replied. "The dementors hold his attention."

The dementors… Harry peered out a large window as the pair passed by, watching grey mist writhe between drizzling lines of rain beyond the glass. The weather had been miserable but for rare exceptions, frigid as late autumn and damp as early spring.

"Has there been a complication?" Harry asked.

"No," Nagini answered. "My master merely wished to check in on them. He is distrustful of their nature."

Harry suppressed a shiver as he stepped outside. Each raindrop bit into him and sought to burrow dreary cold into his bones and the drizzle drummed a persistent patter against the sopping grass and paved walkways which now ran slick and brown with mud. The earthy stench of it was everywhere as he picked his way between neat flowerbeds burdened down by plants whose peddles drooped under the excess weight of so much rain.

Nagini slithered from his shoulders and through a nearby hedge. Harry watched her go, then muttered an activation phrase underneath his breath and felt an unseen hook snag behind his naval.

"Kreacher," he called once back among the obsidian plinths and their carved ravens in Black Manor's entrance hall. The elf appeared with a crack that felt too loud amid the surrounding silence. "Can you bring me today's paper?"

The elf bowed so low, his long nose brushed against the black stone floor. "Yes, young master."

Harry was halfway to the library when Kreacher reappeared and held a copy of the Daily Prophet out to him. Harry seized it without breaking stride, muttering his thanks and turning it over so he could see the front page.

AZKABAN ESCAPEES STILL UNACCOUNTED FOR

By Rita Skeeter

Harry placed the paper on a polished tabletop as he entered the library. The ministry was not only still insisting Sirius Black was responsible and ensuring the populace that the escapees would turn up, but there was no mention of the dementors and certainly none of Voldemort.

Nervousness settled like a block of moulded bread inside his stomach. People would have to wise up soon, wouldn't they? I need this war to last. If Voldemort won too soon, then he would never be free.

Five days later…

Moisture permeated the cool night air and the evening smelled of spring as much as summer. Harry curled his fingers around the damp railing and leant over its edge. The gentle drip of water off Malfoy Manor's protruding roof was the only sound but for the chirping birds and a faint, infrequent breeze. It was the first day in more than a week on which it had not rained and the first night in even longer on which he could see the stars.

A thin smile touched his lips. One last birthday gift, I guess.

It had been a wonderful day filled with feasts and friends, rich presents and rowdy preoccupations.

"You are becoming predictable." Voldemort drifted across the balcony and joined him at its edge. "If I need to find you, all I must do is search the nearest high place overlooking the gardens."

"I'm not trying to be unpredictable," Harry hissed back. "I hope you're not, either. Parseltongue didn't surprise me this time."

"You're learning well," Voldemort admitted. "Everyone is pleased by your progress."

The smile slipped off Harry's lips. "Everyone but me."

"We are different, Harry. We strive for greatness the rest will never know. It is our standards that separate us from them, our willingness to push when lesser men would break."

"That makes it more frustrating, not less. It just means I've given up more but still aren't satisfied."

"The perspective is an important one." Voldemort turned his snake-like face toward him. "I have a gift for you."

"A gift?" Harry pronounced the word as if it was new and foreign.

"Don't sound so surprised. I am a generous lord, am I not?" Voldemort reached into the pocket of his robes and withdrew a plain, black book not unlike the one he used to communicate with him from great distances.

Harry extended out his senses. They had improved along with his Legilimency, but they yielded nothing. "Thank you," he said, lifting the book from Voldemort's bone-white hands.

"Are you not going to ask me what it is?" the Dark Lord inquired with a wry curving of his lips.

Harry forced himself to act at ease. Meek when necessary, but myself when not. That would be far less suspicious than if he walked on egg shells whenever the two were in close proximity. "I expected you'd tell me."

"Did you? How odd. A moment ago, my generosity surprised you." Harry carved a smirk onto his lips, unsure how else to respond. "Once, you asked me about Passive Occlumency."

"I remember." Those had been the worst days — torn by indecision over what to do and with bitter hatred for the recently escaped traitor, Sirius Black.

Voldemort gestured at the book in Harry's hands. "You won't find a more informative book on the Mind Arts than the one you hold now."

"I assume it's not a textbook?" There was a certain weight in Voldemort's words, but Harry could not place its meaning.

"It is a notebook written by my own hand." Harry did not need to feign the slight widening of his eyes. "There is no greater practitioner of these arts than I."

That boast might actually have been true. "Thank you, my lord."

"Go and join Regulus," Voldemort instructed. "He is awaiting you in the entrance hall."

That was odd. Harry had expected he would just portkey back to Black Manor when he was ready. "Yes, my lord." Bowing his head one final time, he turned away and strode back inside.

Elsewhere in the manor, several minutes later…

Draco spun away from his sister's Stunner, snarling as a jet of water turned to ice and left his footing treacherous. "Lacero!"

Diana did not deign to shift her stance as his offbalance spell sailed well wide of her. A chain of hexes found their mark and knocked him off his feet.

Stupid, he cursed, rolling so his hands were underneath his shoulders. Diana had urged an emphasis on precision time and time again. It was his hastiness which often cost him, she insisted, and that had been a prime example. Why had he tried firing off a curse while fighting to maintain an upright posture? There had been almost no chance of true aim and it had given her an opening.

Draco pushed against the floor, but his lungs went flat and he found them to be devoid of air.

It was another careless error. Gaining awareness of what her hexes had inflicted should have been his first goal. Had he conserved his strength and discovered the Asphyxiation Hex, he might have had time to counter it and continue duelling.

His next attempted breath heaved and the air rushed back in. Coughs wracked him and ripped his throat raw, but soon they passed and he looked up from his place lying face down against the floor.

Diana was tucking her wand away. "You have to stop rushing," she told him for the thousandth time.

"I know," he grumbled, regaining his feet and dusting himself off. "I should have focused on defending while offbalance and I should have taken stock of things instead of rushing back into the fight."

"Not just that," his sister said. "Rushing leaves you tense and makes every motion exaggerated. It's easy to see what you're going to do and where you're aiming everything. That's why I knew your Lacero Curse would miss me."

Draco would not sigh or roll his eyes. Those were the gestures of a child and his childhood had ended down in a dark chamber fourteen months ago. "Thank you," he said instead. He was not unappreciative of his sister's aid, just frustrated. It felt as if he would never shore up all his holes.

"You are getting better," Diana praised as if reading her brother's mind. "You're doing a better job of varying your spells and your defence has improved when you spend the energy to focus on it."

"How good are you?" It was not childish, seeking validation. Draco was not insecure, just… frustrated. It was difficult to focus when frustrated and that could not be allowed to stand. "I know you don't really duel, but…"

Diana's shrug was almost careless. "Cassie is much better than me, but I doubt I'd lose to many in the school. Her, Harry, Diggory, and maybe a few others."

"I don't understand how everything is so natural for you," Draco grumbled despite himself. It was patently unfair. "I feel like all my thoughts are rushing over each other and it's all I can do not to freeze and overthink."

"You're actually stronger than me in terms of output," Diana told him. "Your shields are surer and there have been a few times when I was forced to move instead of defend with magic because I couldn't afford to exert the energy needed to pit my spells against yours. My mind is just much more organized and my body has had more time to mature."

Draco choked down a scowl with no small difficulty. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You've grown an inch the last month alone," she reminded him. "I haven't grown in about two years and have had time to get used to the way my body moves. You haven't and it keeps changing. It throws your coordination off and makes precision more difficult, but that's only natural."

How was he supposed to respond to that?

"You still haven't told me why you want to learn," Diana said after a pause that stretched on too long. The question was asked in a casual, offhanded way, but it froze him the same way the well of awkward uneasiness had a moment prior.

Once more he found himself at a loss for words. Was he supposed to tell her he was afraid the Dark Lord would kill him if he was unfit to serve? Or was lying better? Cold anger settled in his bones. Or should I tell her that the Dark Lord is really just a mudblood and that I don't want to bow down before a hypocrite?

Thin lips smiled out from a face framed by emerald green eyes and a mop of raven hair inside his mind. Harry's different, Draco told himself. Not only had his father been a pureblood, but his mother had been talented despite the taint on her and Harry himself was no pretender.

"It's complicated," he mumbled when the quiet grew unbearable.

Diana stepped close and laid a hand on his arm. "I understand how complicated things are, Draco. Believe me, I do. But more than ever, that just means—"

The door creaked open and their mother stumbled into the room. No, not quite stumbled. That was unfair and too strong a word, but it looked like a stumble compared against her customary, gliding gate.

"Mother?" Diana must have seen it too. She did a poor job of concealing her concern.

"What's happened?" Draco asked, tightening the grip he held around his wand as he stepped closer. "Did Father—"

"Your father has done nothing, Draco." Narcissa's voice was calm, but her complexion betrayed the facade she sought. "But… he does wish for you both to attend him in the nearest drawing room."

Not so calm that time. There had been a crack in her composure, a pregnant pause he doubted she had planned out in advance. "Mother, what—"

"Please, Draco." The words were fine but fragile as a flower. "Just… go to him. Please, listen."

A lump in his throat restricted speech as the siblings left the room, but halfway down the hall, Draco regained control over his vocal chords. "What do you think?"

Diana's hands were fussing with her robes. "I don't know," she murmured, smoothing out imagined wrinkles and attempting to displace dust that was not there.

They had reached the heavy door before he could ask any further questions. Diana shot him one last stoic look, then knocked and pushed the door ajar.

Draco blinked and rubbed at eyes unaccustomed to this room's deep darkness. Dim candles lined a long, low table covered in a satin cloth, but the curtains were drawn across the drawing room's high window and there was no sign of torches.

Robes shifted on his left and he turned his head, but Diana was gone. Gone? She could not have been gone; there had not been enough time and the door had swung shut behind them.

A gentle tugging on the hem of his robes almost urged him out of his own skin. Looking down he saw the dim shine of Diana's hair and her pale hand clutching at him. "What are you—"

"Draco!" she hissed. "He's here, he's—"

"It is all right, my dear."

A deep cold bore down on Draco and robbed him of his breath. It was not the sharp sting of winter winds, but the bone-deep chill of frigid moisture after one had grown comfortable and accustomed to a warmer climate.

It was like a thing of nightmares, watching a tall, thin shadow rise from its seat at the table's head. It turned with suffocating slowness to reveal eyes like hot coals, skin like fresh snow, and the flat face one would expect when looking at a snake.

"Do you not recognize your lord, Draco?" the inhuman thing that had come to claim him asked as if this was all a well-meant joke.

Draco did not so much kneel as his tendons liquified and pitched him forward. There was a faint ringing in his ears, but above it, the sound of high, cold laughter called out clearer than the bleakness of his future.

Meanwhile…

"I was told to come find you?" Harry said, pausing feet from where Regulus stood with hands shoved into pockets and a distracted air about him

"Yes," he said. "There's something I want to show you. Follow me." They traipsed through the gardens and between high hedges, through the wrought iron gates and to a stop just outside the ward line. "Have you apparated before?"

It was hard not seeing near-black flames and hearing unearthly laughter as he stared up at a manor not unlike the one he had seen burned. "Once."

"Good. Grab on."

The muscles were taut beneath his fingers, but the air was compressed out of his lungs faster than he could look up and inspect the Lord Black's face.

Invisible wires uncoiled from around his chest and permitted the flow of air. Harry shivered. There had been some bleak days during the past fortnight, but none so cold as this.

It was raining here — not the persistent drizzle that had often afflicted the lands surrounding Malfoy Manor, but a steady stream of fat droplets drumming against low rooftops and and splattering against the sidewalk.

Were they in London? It was hard to say. Swirling fog stretched farther than the eye could see, but through it shone a distorted array of lights and prominent was the city stink — asphalt and petrol, sour sweat and ethnic food not found among witches and wizards. Car horns honked back and forth somewhere far away, but the street they occupied was still and silent.

"Come on," Regulus said, sweeping back his hair before it could grow wet with rain. "It's a short walk."

They struck out down the sidewalk and crossed three quiet streets, then veered down an unkempt path and into the centre of a city square that had seen better days. Plaster peeled from the front of houses surrounding them on three sides. Some had shuttered windows and disrepair marred many of the roofs.

Harry's eyes swept down the lines of homes but paused and went wide when they reached the ruin between numbers eleven and twelve.

By my parents' grave… Hard clay blackened until it resembled careless char composed the ground on which a house must once have stood. Now there was nothing but the desolate depression and the smell of smoke.

"There was a house there once." Each word the Lord Black spoke was flat, dull and hollow as the drip of a single droplet into a deep stone bowl. "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place — a sanctuary for the Founding House of Black that stood for generations."

"What happened?" The drumming rain almost drowned out his question.

Regulus stared straight ahead, his shoulders stiff and squared. "I burned it to the ground."

The memory of demented, inhuman laughter echoing from flames which should not have known the name of mirth chilled him to the bone. "Fiendfyre."

"I had no choice." There was no plea for understanding or forgiveness, just the stating of a simple fact. "There were things in that house that needed burning — things no other spell would burn."

Harry's scar prickled and he rubbed it absentmindedly. What sort of thing would resist any spell but Fiendfyre? "Why are you showing me this?" It was the obvious question, but dread coiled in his stomach as he asked.

"Because I did have some choice." Emotion showed across Regulus's hard face for the first time — it was dark and grim, resigned and resolute as a physician who can do no more than ease the pain of dying men. "I could have warned my parents before I set them and the house on fire."

Harry's heart tripped over its next beat. "You—"

"Killed them. Both of them."

Harry looked from Regulus to the desolation he had left in place of his parents' home. "Why?"

Regulus shrugged his shoulders. "The same reasons you wanted to get rid of your relatives."

"My relatives were muggles, they—"

"Abused you? Neglected you? Harassed you?" A cruel, not-quite smile writhed across the Black lord's lips. "Don't look so surprised, Harry. Muggles aren't the only monsters in the world. I can see the signs well enough." Regulus spat into the sodden grass. "How couldn't I when I used to see them in the mirror every day."

"What…" Harry's skin was crawling, not at the admissions but at the conversation's recent turn, "what did they do?"

"My father beat us, Sirius and I both. Any time we failed to meet his lofty standards. Usually he used magic, but sometimes he did it the muggle way. He used to say it was the one thing those feral dogs got right. He said it was more satisfying that way and thought we learned better. Not that his preferences stopped him from putting Sirius under the Cruciatus Curse."

Stiffness seized at Harry's spine. "The Cruciatus Curse?"

"Sirius always had it worse than me. My mother kept me out of it the best she could. My father wasn't so kind." Regulus's hands curled, then uncurled. "His was the face I imagined while practicing malice-based spells. I still think of him, just like I did the night I buried him in Fiendfyre."

A cold fist closed inside Harry's stomach. They were his own sons.

"You take something from a person by betraying them. You leave behind a cold void that can never be filled."

The bastard had earned his gruesome end and worse. "I killed your brother." Harry had not quite meant to say it, but no regret accompanied the outburst.

Regulus nodded, still staring toward the blackened square of clay. "I thought so. I hope his death was easier than our parents'."

Harry felt no guilt, but his tone was not unkind. "It was fast. The Killing Curse."

Regulus closed his eyes and breathed out deeply. "Sirius chose his side." Had Regulus's mind not doubtlessly been muddled by remembered trauma, Harry might have remarked on the strange words he chose. As it was, they made little sense — the brothers had fought on the same side, after all. "I don't blame you for what you did. Not when his betrayal subjected you to what we lived through."

"That's why you told me, wasn't it?" The knots inside his stomach loosened. "You thought that by telling me about your parents, I might say whether I killed your brother."

"Somewhat," Regulus admitted. "But I mostly wanted you to understand."

"Understand what?" Harry asked. "Why you did it? I understand perfectly—"

"That you can trust me." Harry snapped his mouth closed, frozen by the intensity of Regulus's stare. "You can trust me with anything." Harry watched the Black Lord's throat ripple as he swallowed. "Even if it's about my brother or the Dark Lord."

A special thank you to my high-tier patron, Cup, for her generous and unwavering support.

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