The Tragedy of Harry Potter

by Momento Virtuoso

As Harry lay dying on the forest floor clutching the Resurrection Stone in hand, he is offered a choice between passing onward or continuing forward to his prophesied fate. However, Harry's story wouldn't pick up where he left off at the Battle of Hogwarts but instead finding himself in a world and time in which he only ever saw in photographs. AU. Time-travel.

10. Best Laid Plans of Regulus Black Pt 2

A/N: Here's part 2 as promised. This one was an absolute monster to write and I hope we all enjoy it. Shoutout to our new Beta Readers. They've gone back and edited all the prior chapters for better readability, and split the first 2 chapters back into 4. NOTHING HAS CHANGED PLOT WISE. It's been edited to be more descriptive, contain better characterizations, and finally a better word-flow without blatant errors.

AU Changes: Canon-character changes. Imperius Curse Immunity.

Graphic Warning: Torture, Abuse, and Graphic Imagery.

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The Tragedy of Harry Potter

By. Momento Virtuoso

Edited By: BoredBarrister & Nandoska

Chapter 10

The Best Laid Plans of Regulus Black pt. 2

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Hours Before the Attack on Amelia Bones

Harry threw a sickly green spell at a training dummy set out in the Room of Requirement. The beam from his spell hit its torso, and the wooden body began to melt and fall off the frame courtesy of the plasma the spell left behind on collision.

His mind played out the scenario in which his aim had been true and he had hit Rabastan Lestrange during that hectic day in Knockturn Alley. Though he was happy he hadn't struck the dark wizard with it, he was also disgusted with himself for letting the man walk away from the encounter.

A pang of sickness stabbed through Harry as he imagined what the spell would do to an actual living being of any creed. Was it the same disgust he'd felt earlier, or was it from contemplating the suffering his victim would have endured? Either way, it certainly would have been a gruesome end.

The time-traveling wizard had been working on his repertoire for hours, advancing his spell craft with the Sayre Journal. Harry had begun to delve deeper into the darker spells the book offered. Slowly, as if wading into a deep body of water, he was immersing himself in forbidden knowledge.

The book spoke of spells that could summon spirits or even destroy the mortal body with a single incantation — like the one he had just attempted. The Journal was one of the most unique books Harry had ever read, far surpassing the Potions Book of the Half-Blood Prince and, dare he admit it, the Riddle Diary.

With The Sayre Journal, Harry was learning new forms of magic and different ways to implement his upon every page of the seemingly endless grimoire. Despite the appearance of being finite, Harry suspected there was potentially infinite knowledge within its bindings with how knowledgeable Gormlaith seemed to be.

There were gray paths through the chapters and entries, but there were also some extremely dark avenues of magic too.
The more Harry studied and practiced, the more fluid his wand motions became as he weaved the complex incantations; he had even begun to obtain a level of competency with runes, hoping to integrate them into his dueling style.

The potential of the magical branch was endless for him, with a variety of options to adapt. He could place a rune on a person or any surface with a swiftness not seen amongst his peers. The magic he embedded in the rune would last until the rune was triggered or Harry's magic was released from the pictogram. Harry's advancement in the art had progressed him to the point of no longer needing a solid surface.

For a few attempts now, he had successfully drawn out runes with the tip of his wand in the air. He accomplished this with an adaptation that Gormlaith had pioneered herself with the Blue-Bell Flame Charm, ' Ignis Aurum'. The method required no preparation of material beforehand, but insisted on an intense level of concentration. It even required a moment of calm amid the chaos of a battlefield in order to execute it effectively. A brief, almost meditative pause in the heat of the conflict was crucial for the precise and intricate work needed to draw the runes successfully.

Preparing for the impending war, Harry's abilities began to reflect the eventual violence he would have to partake in; disarming and stunners were a thing of the past. His repertoire was veering towards more and more dangerous spells ever-so-slowly. It was a dawning and damning realization which he had to come to terms with. A desire burned in his chest to be gentle, but how could one be so if all they ever knew was great violence? Harry lost sleep most nights while he pondered the nature of the question.

Lying in bed in the dark hours of night where no light dared to tread with the sun's retreat. He thought of Dumbledore; his Dumbledore. He pondered on the kind of man he had been in his later years, at the twilight of his life upon the peak of the Astronomy Tower. His mind a quagmire of more questions which he could find no answers for. Truths and wisdom he had not pried from the old man in his last moments with him.

'All those years… all that long and short time. Wasted and for what? Twenty-one years in the past with nothing to show for it…'

What were 'his', Dumbledore's motives for sending him back? Did he even have a hand in it? Harry thought the man had been genuine in the end, but too many scars marred his skin in error of trusting the old Headmaster. But Harry couldn't help but think that even in this lifetime, Dumbledore in a way held the answers to the questions he wrestled with. He knew Dumbledore wrestled with them himself at one point in his life.

How many lives could he save? What regrets did he hold like a torch in mishandling the Dark Lords of his time? How many could be spared from the horrors of war if not for one quick decisive act against Voldemort before his time? A rebellion against his 'touch of destiny'.

An acid ate away at him from the inside as the only reasonable thing Dumbledore would say to any of that floated in his mind — an answer that Harry knew the old man held firmly like a truth written in stone. Four words which filled his cheeks in a poisonous bile for even considering. How many months now had he been whispering them under his breath at the memory of his mentor?

'For the Greater Good'

The phrase rang like a steady drum in between Harry's ears and behind his eyes. The phrase sounded sweet, but it was a poisoned honey upon his tongue whenever he mouthed them out loud.

But then there were the questions Harry kept deep within himself like seeds in the darkness in fear of what they might grow into if they ever touched light. The rumination of the path he could trek but the echoes off his walls only repeated the famous muggle saying: 'the road to Hell was paved with good intentions.'

What even was a greater good and was it up for people like him to decide? Could a person even do so without casually tossing his morals away if it meant a brighter future? How easy was it for a good man — a kind one to break bad after doing so?

All Harry knew was that the answer was not buried with the first life he'd departed from. The foreknowledge of such a thing was a divine blessing and the vilest of prophetic curses. A life lived was a lesson learned and Harry had taken the wisdom in kind, not comprehending its vile parasitic nature.

The knowledge Harry now fostered bore a fruit of its own dilemma, sprouted from a tree growing in his soul. He feared how deep its roots sunk within him for nourishment. Could the goodness in him be absorbed away to make way for something worse? Or could an evil thing grown and nurtured properly perform a greater good?

"You were wrong again, Dumbledore. I'm not better than you."

He wasn't sure if he wanted to be, if being better than Dumbledore was even a good thing for him to emulate.

Harry didn't know yet if that meant he had what it took to do the necessary things, to make the sacrifices he knew had to be made. Could he easily shrug off the Dumbledorean morals grown and harvested within him by those around him for so many years? Perhaps he could be more like the man himself, capable of harnessing the myriad shades of gray in which he swam.

Now wasn't the time for such quandaries. Although Harry couldn't bring himself to make a definitive decision, he knew that soon there would be no room for any indecisiveness, no matter how desperately he might wish for or dread its companionship.

Shaking his head of the haunting memories from the Second Wizarding War and his previous life, Harry's thoughts shifted to his interactions with Verona Jennings, whom he had agreed to meet soon for some sort of tutoring.

Harry didn't know what to make of the muggle-born Slytherin adoptee, who was evidently friends with Bellatrix Black. He had never suspected Verona to be nearly as welcoming in person as she was after seeing her often near the dark witch.

He couldn't understand how someone as sane and nice as Jennings was friends with that psychopath. It had to be a con or something on Bellatrix's part; a part of him couldn't reconcile Bellatrix being friends nor even friendly with anyone muggle-related.

Bellatrix Black never had friends that weren't Death Eaters; Harry was sure of that constant in the universe.

Returning from the recesses of his mind, Harry stood once again in the Room of Requirement, replacing the training dummy his magic melted through. He shook his head, attempting to retrieve the time he had lost. How many spells had he cast so far? They were all beginning to blur together in his exhaustion.

Harry watched on eerily as one spell from the Sayre Journal made the victim's blood turn blackish and clot up; the result unequivocally spelled death for the poor sap on the receiving end.

Harry didn't quite understand how the Room knew how to make the dummies with vascular systems, but he didn't question it nor the spell he had learned from the Journal.

Harry noticed that the gorgon core of his favored wand wielded the magic of acidic or even colubrine curses easiest, as if they were natural to it. Yet, perhaps due to its prior corruption, he could feel the wand casting a shadow, a sliver of resistance to him despite its acceptance of his partnership. The gorgon wand took no pleasure in its duty yet performed masterfully, like a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome. Its reluctance spoke to Harry of the sentience within wands. If they were self-aware, then perhaps they possessed emotions too?

The blackened wood of the birch wand creaked with every curse Harry cast, a moan of condemnation at the dark magic he was experimenting and training with. It felt a void, so far from the time it had joyfully sung like the time he had cast his patronus charm with it. His magic felt more powerful but at the cost of a heaviness — like guilt after judgment.

After several hours of spell-craft and his physical conditioning, Harry wiped the sweat from his face and left the Room of Requirement. He opted to not clean up since he would be active while tutoring Verona during their session together.

Checking the timepiece on his wrist, Harry read that it was only 11:30 a.m. It was time for him to depart if he didn't want to get stuck too long on the Moving Staircase.

---

Verona entered the fifth-floor corridor and saw no sign of Harry at first. She had pegged him as a person who was potentially early to his commitments. He seemed the type, serious as he was.

'Well — I am ridiculously early though, can't expect that out of everyone else.'

She shook her head briefly as she entered the empty classroom, inspecting the room briefly before moving to sit on a desk near the front of the room. It was a decent sized space for performing spells, if that was what Harry wanted to do with her.

Verona hoped it wouldn't be a quill and parchment sort of tutoring lesson. She would have dragged him to the library in order to bore him into regaling her about himself. She was here for the practical aspect and not the theory, after all. Thinking over it all, Verona questioned her goals.

"What the fuck are you doing, Ver? It's just a stupid boy… a stupid boy who your friend is obsessing over, big whoop," she mockingly muttered. She was still unsettled by Bellatrix's fascination with the wizard.

Bellatrix Black was as territorial as they came and, perhaps, after so many years by her side, Verona had picked up the characteristic from the witch too. It had been a bitter taste not to have a monopoly on Bellatrix's attention or affection over the last few weeks.

'Perfectly normal. We're both independent people. Not like we owe each other anything,' she thought as if reciting a universal truth to herself.

She did owe Bellatrix, though — at least, Verona felt she did. The girl with dark curls had aided her in managing the bigots of their house for years now, helped nurture many of her talents, and requested nothing in return except for companionship. Bellatrix always looked out for her, so why couldn't she look out this one time for her? If Bellatrix was fascinated with Harry Evans, then she was determined to understand why. She felt compelled to get the measure of the man he was.

She was prepared to put him down though, if he in any way disappointed her. She wouldn't let him have a moment to do the same to Bellatrix. He had already inadvertently shown his opinion of the witch yesterday. Harry Evans had looked as if he was a man possessed the moment the first syllable of her name was spoken.

"Hate my friend now, do ya? What'll we do about that?" Verona asked herself, tapping her hand against the desk. Taking fresh oxygen into her lungs, she released all her doubts and worries in the next breath. It would be untoward of her to immediately be rude to the wizard; even despite his slight against her friend, Harry Evans appeared to be a decent enough bloke.

She needed to remain composed today, for her own sake, to move forward with Harry Evans and to provide any insights she could to Bellatrix about the boy.
Verona drew her wand, deciding to practice a spell while she waited for Harry to show.

---

Outside the empty classroom

Harry made his way down to the fifth floor and began checking the various rooms lining the corridor until, finally, he found the girl he had escorted from the Caretaker's office sitting on the desk in the front of an empty row. She was hovering a ball of light with her wand, watching the orb intently as she bounced it up and down like one would a small child.

Harry was reminded of Dumbledore's Deluminator by the way the glowing orb was suspended in the air.

Opting to use the girl's first name, like she had insisted, Harry knocked on the door.

"Morning, Verona."

Verona yelped, releasing her spell with a jump., The ball dissipated into the air quickly, absorbing itself into the ambient light around the room.

"Oi! Don't startle a girl like that," Verona huffed, lowering her wand to her side.

Harry smirked. "I knocked, didn't I?"

The Slytherin rolled her eyes at the wizard, but a smile played on her lips.

"Regardless, I'm glad you're here and agreeing to help me with my Defense," Verona giggled. She pushed her smile wider, deciding to lay the charm on Harry quickly. She figured that flattery would get her far with the boy.

Harry fought back a blush that rose to his cheeks and scratched the back of his wild black hair.

"So, about that, what is it that you are exactly having trouble with?" Harry asked. Depending on the girl's answer, he mightn't even be of help to the witch.

Harry was sure he could teach her spells and even proper forms, but if she was asking for something like silent casting, then she was in the same boat as him. While Harry had been improving at the method as of late, it seemed that practice and determination were indeed the only true paths to stumbling forward through that dark forest.

Verona tapped her wand against her chin, thinking for a moment about the topics she had the most trouble with for DADA.

"Dueling, for one. I'm not the best at it when compared to others," Verona lied. She had been personally trained by Bellatrix Black, who herself had been trained by her grandfather, Arcturus Black. While she couldn't hold a candle to her friend, Verona was no slouch.

She couldn't pass up the chance to see just how well and truly skilled the boy was.

"I have a lot of trouble with my spell sequencing in dueling. I tend to just throw spells, hoping one lands rather than setting up for an execution like you did with Rabastan in class," she revealed, hoping that Harry wouldn't catch the small fib of her request.

Harry nodded and smiled in understanding, glad that she had chosen that to be their topic.

These were definitely concepts he could aid her with and help build up. Hell, he had taught a lot of the basics to this during his tenure in Dumbledore's Army. Now, he had been learning the advancements of these very topics from Professor Renault's dueling guide and supplementing with it what he learned in the Sayre Journal.

Harry decided not to reveal their professor's book on dueling, though. It seemed to be a hard find for reading material, and Harry had gained a habit of keeping knowledge close to his chest since his time with Dumbledore in sixth year.

He would be sparingly interested in what he taught her from the Professor's work, and he would never surrender the Sayre Journal's contents to anyone willingly at the moment. Doing so could earn him a trip to Azkaban, anyway.

"We can definitely cover that. Let's get the space set up, shall we?" Harry asked, removing the gorgon wand from its holster.

Together, the witch and wizard began to float the furniture around the classroom off to the side out of their path, giving them both enough room to maneuver. Once done, the two stood facing each other, wands drawn and hanging loosely in their hands.

Harry's attention briefly honed in on the wand in Verona's hand. It was a simplistic yet intricate design. There was no handle or knob at the end like his wand possessed, but the light brown wood of her wand displayed blossoms precisely crafted along its entire length.

Harry's own wand held Verona's attention in turn. She studied the black corruption spreading from its tip and the dark orb resting at the base of the handle closely; it felt as if the piece of wood was watching her. She had seen the object only in glances when he used it in class or, like yesterday, jumping at every shadow they came across.

Verona imagined that wand being pointed at her friend's heart, like Bella had described the day she met Evans in Knockturn Alley. The blatant corruption hovering just over her own heart.

A knot grew in Verona's throat. The myriad ways such a wand had been tortured to be such a pestilential thing lurked in her mind like a dancing shadow on the wall. What exactly had turned it into such a twisted thing? She now sympathized with Bellatrix's curiosity about the matter.

Harry took a breath before adopting the teaching persona he had crafted years ago.

"Ok, so like Professor Renault explained in class, it's safest to focus on immobilization before casting an offensive spell against your target. An enemy who can't move is one who can't dodge, of course," Harry started.

Harry transfigured a chair that was off to the side into one of the dummies like the Room of Requirement. Its hooded figure was eerily similar to those in the know of the Pureblood Movement by Verona's reckoning, and she raised her eyebrow at the choice of target.

"What Renault didn't explain though was that the spells and the sequence needed to be in the sound of three. You cast an immobilization jinx, then an offensive spell, finally followed by a defensive charm of some sorts. This is so you can take down your opponent and defend yourself against any wild card they may throw," Harry lectured.

"Once you have this basic sequence down, you can even turn it around or switch the components depending on the opponent you face," Harry explained from what he remembered reading in the professor's dueling guide.

Quickly, with a flick of his wand, a rope shot out, which wrapped itself around the dummy's neck, arms, and wrists, binding them all to its torso. The sound of wooden joints cracking and splintering was louder than both expected in the silent room.

The rope, as if alive, coiled tighter and tighter around its detainee like a constrictor. Harry followed up the immobilization of his target by sending a cutting curse that cleaved a chunk out of its side, finally throwing a silent protego around himself, defending against an imaginary spell that a real person could have potentially cast.

Verona watched the almost fluid sequence of motion that was conceived in Harry's wrist and birthed from the tip of his birchwood wand. There was nearly no wasted movement in Harry's elbow or shoulders, nor did he even move his feet unnecessarily. He only involuntarily took a defensive step back on reflex when he cast the shield charm.

Verona noted the wizard's potential vulnerabilities and habits in her mind, carefully formulating a plan for when the time would come to raise her wand against him.

Ending the demonstration of the sequence with a wave of his wand, Harry re-transfigured the dummy with no wounds or rope restraining it.

"Alright now, let's see you try. Remember, the sequence is in three. If you need to, move a little to get a feel for it," Harry suggested with a smile, nodding patiently as Verona prepared herself by shaking out her limbs.

'He's a patient teacher… he's done this before,' Verona surmised, before taking a stand before the dummy.

She could practically see the wizard was in his element when instructing like this. Bellatrix would be extremely interested in that information on Evans, for sure. Barely anyone knew the full story of Harry Evans; most only had what they heard from second-hand rumors or seen him perform in class.

Verona breathed in and out, squaring her shoulders, and cast her spell sequence with her vine wood wand pointed forward, taking her inspiration from Evans's display in their Defense class.

With her cast, the dummy's frame stuck to the ground with a sticking charm. With the target immobilized, a cannon-like blast shot from her wand, caving the dummy's torso in as it leaned backwards from the force, in spite of the sticking charm. Several desks behind the dummy became unfortunate collateral, resembling no more than firewood scrap now.

Verona weaved from offense to defense with a subtle motion of her wand, like she was flicking it outwards. A large bubble sprang from its point until it grew large enough to consume and encase the caster.

Harry eyed the bubble with a raised brow, turned his wand on the bubble and shot a stinging hex quickly at Verona's defense which elicited a yelp of surprise but then a chuckle from the girl.

Harry's spell sailed true and struck the bubble, creating a ripple upon its surface and floating the spell till the stinging hex was flung back at him in reverse.

Surprise stung at him first before Harry flung himself to the side to avoid the hex barreling at his face. He had been on the receiving end of one before and was not looking to repeat the experience.

Verona laughed loudly at seeing Harry dive to the ground after earning self-bought retribution for probing the defense of her Bubble-Shield charm. It was an ingenious charm that could reflect most low- to medium-level spells. It would only crumble if the integrity of her charm was broken, or if the magic was overpowered.

The Slytherin had quite the nice laugh, which Harry couldn't help but smile at. At the notion of such a thing, the kind thought evaporated just as quickly as it appeared.

'Stop it — you're supposed to be tutoring her, so act like it. Remember, she's friends with Bellatrix,' he thought, reinforcing the idea. Shaking off whatever friendship was growing between him and the girl.

Verona noticed his face change from friendly to serious. Her face followed suit, assuming they had now begun the actual dueling part of the lesson.

Stepping up her game, Verona took advantage of Harry's prone position on the floor and shot out a body-bind jinx at him, staying true to the sequence he had started with her.

Harry's eyes widened at seeing the attack on his person. Harry had been in so many life-and-death situations that the adrenaline felt like an old friend to him. Overwhelming situations seldom affected him anymore.

Instincts kicked in and he rolled into a kneeling position, avoiding the jinx by a wide margin. Taking a note from his earlier explanation, he switched the sequence on Verona, who had sent another immobilization spell at him followed quickly by a curse of some kind.

Harry deflected the curse with the tip of his wand and avoided the next jinx sent to trip him up.

'She's free to just stand there and attack me in that stupid bubble,' Harry thought, racking his brain for a spell with enough power to blow the bubble but not harm the person within.

Knowing that the bubble would potentially reflect any spell sent at it directly, Harry opted to attack something else entirely. Thrusting his wand forward, Harry silently cast 'Expulso' on the floor around where Verona and her bubble were situated.

Verona felt the pressure build up around her feet before the stones beneath her erupted outwards, scattering in every direction. Knowing her defense would falter in the physical aftermath of Harry's spell, the girl opted to cast 'Duro' over herself in the last moment of safety, strengthening her body against the fallout from the small explosion at her feet.

"Needed tutoring, huh?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowed, questioning the display before him. It wasn't a decision a novice duelist would have made. Those with inexperience would have tried to avoid the spell entirely, ultimately being caught in the tail end of the explosion.

Verona smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Harry, knowing her game was up, and she was proverbially caught. She held her hands up in surrender.

"If it makes you feel any better, I really do need tutoring. I wasn't lying about not being the best," she giggled.

Verona telegraphed her next spell with the motions of a stunning charm, hoping to catch him unaware. Harry lowered his knees, preparing to leap out of the path, yet the spell still struck him. No sound of surprise left him. The witch caught him with her true spell, a silencing curse that removed his mouth from existence.

Harry panicked for a second, breathing loudly through his nose and earning a smirk from the witch as she shot a rope from the tip of her wand to lasso him into her clutches. The ropes sailed through the air, the ends grasping towards his neck.

Harry's breathing slowed, eyes narrowing at the incoming noose. He deftly slipped under the spell as it constricted around the open air his neck had been previously. Not willing to let the silencing curse hinder him, he thought of a way around the handicap. Harry had been drilling silent casting like a machine in his own training. With his mouth banished, Harry began to release a flurry of spells at the witch, taking her by surprise.

Verona's eyes widened at the plethora of spell fire that sailed towards her. She counted two stunners, one hiding a body-bind jinx, a Giggling Charm, and by the loud explosions beginning to sprout around her head and singing the edges of her robes, Harry had included a 'Crepitus Jinx' as well to rub it in.

After dodging two spells from the volley sent her way, Verona elected to hide behind her bubble shield, invoking the safety of the orb once more. Safe from Harry's magical onslaught, Verona once again put the wizard on his back foot.

"Fulmina!" the witch cried out the spell, breaking the pair's streak of silent casting. A turquoise bolt of magic shot from her wand like an arrow, aiming for Harry's proverbial and literal jugular.

Seeing the girl sitting safely in her defense once more, Harry knew he had to flush her out in a new way. However, the answer to the dilemma of Verona's defense would have to wait for a moment after he handled the attack coming his way.

Harry felt the power behind the spell and knew a quick Protego wouldn't cut it, nor did he want to step into another trap like he had with his mouth being banished away.

Deciding his course, Harry entrusted himself to the many hours spent honing the craft he had taken up so far. He put his faith in the Sayre Journal and hoped it hadn't led him astray.

The tip of Harry's wand ignited with a bright blue flame. With a steady hand, the wizard drew in the air a straight line going down with two lines branching off towards the side, forming the shape of '𐌙'. The Elder Futhark rune glowed eerily in the air like a spirit before exploding outward as Verona's bolt of magic flew past it.

It absorbed her magic and nullified the bolt in midair into nothing at only a touch.

Verona stared in awe at the wizard's use of the runic magical art. Like many in Hogwarts, she took Runation and Ancient Runes, but she had nowhere near the proficiency to craft one in a duel, let alone in midair with just her magic as the medium.

'Bella was right… Evans knows his damned runes. Fuck, this is going to be interesting,' Verona grimaced outwardly with her mouth thinning into a line. The duel had just gone from being a hill to a literal mountain she'd have to climb to come out on top of the boy.

Luckily for her, Harry didn't show up first and prepare a literal minefield for her to stumble through. Someone who was skilled in dueling runes was one of the hardest opponents anyone could ever stumble across. They had an answer to almost everything, and their runes could literally change the terrain of battlefields with enough prep time.

Deciding to throw caution to the wind, Verona sank back a step before throwing out a spell sequence that would hopefully trick up the challenging Gryffindor.

"Glacius Tria!'' As soon as the words left her lips, the blue beam was in the air. Harry watched as the bright blue spell flew towards him, leaving a chill in its wake. He eyed the frost that was left on the floor from the tail of the spell.

Watching the first spell, though, Harry wasn't ready for the silent cast spell that followed behind it.

Verona switched the sequence he taught her, casting her attack before her immobilization spell. With a flick of her wand, she silently cast 'Baubillious Azule!'. A bright blue spark sprayed out of her wand and blinded Harry.

Harry raised an arm to cover his now-burning eyes, bumping his glasses up on his face and cutting his nose slightly. As soon as it came, the blue light faded, but his vision was left compromised as he saw doubles of everything, including the spell that was now practically on top of him.

Knowing he now only had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out unscathed, Harry chose a direction and dove to the side; the edge of the real spell and not its double caught his sleeve and froze the robe solid.

Unable to see as he crashed to the ground, Harry calculated his trajectory in his mind before extending his arm towards where he perceived Verona to be. A bright rope burst from his wand, an extension of his reach. The rope wrapping around Verona's wand arm felt like his own hand tightening around her wrist, restricting her spell casting. Harry tugged the magical rope from his wand with all his might, throwing Verona off balance and crashing forward onto the ground.

The witch's wand fell from her bound hands and tumbled away from her.

The tell-tale clicks and clacks of the wood, bouncing across the stone floor, signaled Harry's victory. He had successfully disarmed the witch, for once stripping his opponent's wand from them without using the disarming-charm.

Harry rubbed the light spots from his eyes, wincing as his vision returned.

"Bloody hell — ow. Nice sequence swap you did there, hiding your immobilization behind an attack was a great idea," Harry commended the witch as he got up from the ground.

It was an idea he would be stealing for his own training going forward. Harry was slightly frustrated he hadn't thought of the tactic first before. It had almost been effective on him. If he hadn't been slightly battle-hardened and tested, then Verona would have had him dead to rights with that combination.

Harry vanished the rope from his wand and unbinded the Slytherin, who sat up from the ground. Verona blew a strand of brown hair from her face as she glared at the wizard.

"You could have had the decency to fall for it. You know, like a gentleman?" the Slytherin teased, acting bitter for her loss.

"You could have told the truth and said you didn't need any tutoring in dueling," Harry shot back, unsympathetic to her pouting.

Verona elected to blow a raspberry at the young man.

"I told you before, and I'll admit it again. I'm not the best. Ergo, I need help in dueling," the witch reasoned with her victor, her tone going frustrated at the end as she thought about how the duel went.

Verona never liked when victory was just in her grasp, only to be swiped away at the last moment by her opponent. It happened too often for her liking with Bella; she didn't need it with this fool too.

Harry smiled at the girl and let out a chuckle. It was one of the first genuine laughs he had since his stumble through time.

"If I had fallen for it, like a gentleman," Harry retorted, holding up air quotes with a smirk. "Then you wouldn't have learned anything. I would have been failing my duty as your tutor. Which you apparently so desperately need."

Verona glared daggers at the wizard from where she lay on the ground.

"Fuck you and fuck your tutoring duty, Evans. Learn to take a fall, why don't you?" Verona grumbled. She had been hoping to overcome the wizard so she could prove to Bellatrix that Evans wasn't all that she thought he was.

'She'll only be more impressed by him now if she ever hears of this.'

Bellatrix had been impressed when he had put her on the back foot, and it seemed rightly justified to Verona now. There were only a handful of moments where she managed to get a moment of surprise on Evans till he was back to turning the revolving door on her to hand the witch her own ass on a plate.

She had desperately hoped that the show the wizard had performed in Professor Renault's class had been a fluke, that the stories of his confrontation she had heard of in Knockturn had been the subject of exaggeration. However, after witnessing Harry Evans' split decision-making while under duress. It was clear his duel in class with Rabastan had not been a fluke, nor had his three-way duel in Knockturn been a tale of exaggeration. Harry Evans was indeed skilled with his wand and quick to think on his feet.

Harry retrieved the vine wood wand from the floor and held out a hand to aid Verona to her feet. The Slytherin swiped her wand from his hand, pulling herself up with his aid begrudgingly, and dusted off her skirt from its excursion on the stone floor.

Verona glared at the boy, while Harry just watched her warily. Soon, the two broke into smiles and chuckled.

"Nice one, Evans. Next time perhaps I'll banish your whole head and it'll give me a chance," Verona threatened lightly. She suppressed a chortle, imagining the wizard running around without a head.

"Good effort, Verona. Perform like that in class and you'll be one of the best in no time," Harry assured her.

Verona huffed with indignation.

"As if. I wouldn't last five minutes with you, let alone Bellatrix. She's the best duelist in our year by miles, Hell — probably the whole fucking school," Verona admitted to herself glumly. While the girl was her friend, Verona had always wanted to best her in combat and prove that she was worthy of the girl's friendship and the dedication she put into helping her grow.

'So that's who the best is, apparently,' Harry thought.

Despite being exhausted from their session, the pair fixed the classroom back up in the state they had found it in. It wouldn't do for a prefect or a member of staff to come upon a classroom torn apart by errant spells. The pair left the room but stopped just outside of it's door, standing out in the hallway.

Harry's demeanor shortened once more at the mention of Bellatrix. He was cautious of the dark witch for everything her older self-had inflicted upon him and his friends, things she hadn't the time or experience to commit yet.

Harry was also torn between offering her a blank slate or holding her to the crimes of her future.

Surely, Bellatrix wasn't one of the irredeemable souls that Dumbledore expected him to hold his hand out to in their darkest moment? When Harry imagined redeeming figures from the past, he had assumed the headmaster was referring to someone like Severus Snape, hoping to save the spy and potions master from his grim fate. Bellatrix hadn't even crossed his mind. At worst, he had thought of Peter Pettigrew.

"She really is something then, hm?" Harry asked out loud. His eyes dimmed, shifting out of focus, while his fists clenched momentarily. He shook his head quickly, as though plagued by a severe itch.

Verona paused and observed the darker hues of Harry's demeanor. She subtly nodded to agree with him while considering the sight before her. He didn't even appear to notice his own behavior. A clear sign of the mental distress of Harry's mind.

'Seems like yesterday wasn't some kind of fluke — he hates her — he really hates her.'

Verona thought of Bellatrix, of the girl she knew who really only wanted to be accepted for herself— not for her family name, but her magical prowess. To be recognized for her worth. The idea of someone, anyone really judging Bellatrix without really knowing her, didn't sit well in her chest. Harry Evans didn't really know Bellatrix, but Verona doubted that locking the pair in a room together would result in any friendships. If this was his opinion, how had it come about? Who had spoken ill of her to him?

'Fuck it. She'll probably thank me later— at least he's competent,' she grumbled. She resolved herself to shift his opinion on her friend; the very antithesis of her earlier intentions.

"She really isn't all that bad, you know. Sure, she's rough around the edges. She's more likely to gut you than offer a helping hand, but she's kind in her own roundabout ways."

Verona hoped it was enough to begin the process of dispelling whatever darkness Harry held for Bellatrix. Most would never believe that the Bellatrix Verona spoke of held a kind bone in her body, which made it easier for her to reveal the gentler side that not only Verona saw but also her family.

Harry looked onwards, not staring at anything in particular as he absorbed the information. Perhaps Verona was right. She knew the younger Bellatrix better than he did, after all. The knife of Bellatrix's personality twisted within him with its razor-edge once more, distorting his opinion of her further.

He needed to settle this inner conflict soon, or else it would eventually consume him. After all, he had to live in the same castle with the witch for an entire year. Harry needed to find some form of compromise within himself, or he might snap and potentially murder the witch in the corridors. "Bellatrix—how long have you known her for?" Harry asked. His eyes were curious, but his voice was sharp and to the point. He couldn't bring himself to ask any kinder questions about the witch.

"We met in our first year. We never interacted at all, really, at first. I was bullied a lot by students in Slytherin and a lot of pureblood families in general. One day, I stood up for myself, and she saw it. Bellatrix told me I had impressed her, so she actually helped me against some of them from then on," Verona spoke of that January back in '71.

Harry nodded to the story but paused in brief contemplation. "Wait… she wasn't one of your bullies? She wasn't disturbed or even malicious towards you for your blood status? She's struck me as someone who would support the Pureblood Movement, right?" Harry questioned, unable to imagine her as anything but a blood supremacist, a future tool and puppet of Voldemort. An agent of chaos who'd cackle as the world burned.

Verona's own face was one of confusion. "No, she was never one of my bullies. As for blood supremacy, I mean, she isn't a fan of them per se, yet I know there are some philosophies she agrees with. She's not a total hardliner like her aunt but more like her grandfather," the girl affirmed slowly, trying to think up the best way to describe the eccentricities of Bellatrix Black.

While it was true that Bellatrix would rather cut off her own hand than interact with an actual muggle, she would at least extend the grace of indifference to any muggle-born who was trying to adopt wizarding ways, Verona being the witch's sole exception.

Verona thought for a moment about the qualities of the curly-raven-haired witch she called a friend.

"Bella has certain quirks she likes about Muggle culture. Yes, there's much about them that she hates too. But she's never begrudged my blood status, and I haven't known her to do so with anyone else—at least publicly," the witch revealed, carefully selecting her words.

"What do you mean, quirks?" Harry asked in worry. He knew the quirks of the older version of the witch were the torture, maiming, and outright murder of them. Harry dreaded learning what the younger Bellatrix found interesting or hated about muggles.

Verona however, shook her head at the boy. "I won't tell you much but I'll just say she likes their books and even their music sometimes."

Harry was flabbergasted. 'Bellatrix Lestran—Bellatrix Black liked muggle culture?!' he thought in shock and awe. A chuckle escaped the wizard, which surprised himself and Verona, whose eyes widened at the act and his sudden change of demeanor.

Harry just couldn't imagine the Bellatrix that he knew enjoying anything muggle unless it was their direct suffering. The woman that he knew was almost synonymous with the concept.

The mad woman had craved the words 'Mudblood' into the skin of his best friend, after all. It was hard to reconcile the two images in his head, but here he was being told that the opposite existed currently compared to what he knew.

While Hermione was keen to often call Harry an idiot, he wasn't totally ignorant.

Harry knew, like everyone in the world, barring a few outliers like Tom Riddle, were all initially good and turned bad by the circumstances of their life. Perhaps Bellatrix was just another one of these who just didn't have the same opportunities to be good?

It was serious food for thought for the wizard. One that made him seem to sink into himself.

For once, Harry saw a potential light with Bellatrix. Perhaps she was redeemable? Harry smirked at Verona's odd explanation of the witch, which slightly humanized the demented figure of Bellatrix he held so strongly within his mind.

However, the train of thought occupying his mind came to a sudden halt and crashed off of its tracks.

A low-tone buzzing entered Harry's head with no warning. The only sign that anything was amiss in the space about him, as something reached out as if with tendrils, wrapping around his mind as if it was cradling his personality.

Harry instinctively raised up his Occlumency shields to defend against the mental intrusion, but his prior exhaustion from the duel dulled his reflexes. It left him vulnerable and his mind couldn't muster the strength to resist in time. The haze seeped into his brain like a rolling fog, lifting the anxiety of everything from his shoulders.

Harry was lighter than he ever felt in years — there was no oncoming war in the public on the horizon, already being waged in the shadows. No Dark Lord looming over him. No life left behind or the struggle to make a new one here. For the first time since perhaps his early days at Hogwarts in his first-year, Harry felt a sense of peace.

A lulling voice in the back of his head came to the forefront of his drugged mind, charmingly whispering to him like a friend would a sweet nothing.

"Attack her… with your wand…"

Harry's hand wanted to reach for his wand and use it on the witch beside him. To hurt her like the voice wanted. The muscles in his hand began erratically twitching at wanting to follow the motion, but Harry stopped its will from fulfilling the task.

'But why would I want to do that? I don't want to attack her. Do I?' Harry was confused, wondering where the urge had come from. Harry frowned further as he discerned the fog tighten around him. He had felt this way before, but he wasn't sure where…

The sensation sent the thought skipping away from the tip of his tongue. Why should he worry about what he was feeling when he had an order to fulfill? Why did he have the order in the first place?

Harry could see Verona waving in front of his face, but he couldn't make out any of the words leaving her mouth. His eyes tracked her moving lips, though he was trying to pinpoint some clarity through the blurry, idyllic miasma he was mentally bogged down inside.

"Curse her now!… Stun her!… Harm her… and take something for evidence!" the voice insisted once more, growing urgent and snappish but the desire to go for his wand faded. His hand had calmed down to a stillness.

Overcoming the fog a bit, Harry tried to reach out with Legilimency in a bid to sense out the origin of the voice. But his exhaustion hindered his effort, causing his attempt to falter and cancel out. Despite this, the brief effort was enough to clear his own head considerably.

'No! I'm not going to hurt her — fuck off whoever you are, and if you're my conscious, then act straight damn it,' Harry thought to the voice sharply now, his snark rising up now in his frustration.

The ghost that was his own mind emerged, tangible and overpowering whatever was confounding with his mental capabilities slowly.

Harry still couldn't recognize much at the moment, given the condition he was in. But his mind knew that he was tired. Yet, not by physical exhaustion but a mental and emotional one.

He was tired and done with people messing with his head over the years. Crouch, Snape, Voldemort, Dumbledore.

Clearer than ever before in his mind, "You have to attack her! Raise your wand and curse her!" the voice insisted once more almost angrily but also in a scared begging light Harry picked up on. Whoever was doing this was desperate.

Then, like a charging Crumple-Horned Snorkack coming down full force, it hit Harry how he knew what this was. The Imperius Curse. It was strange. He had felt the curse before. He remembered being underneath its influence but the experience itself was voided from his memory.

'Barty Crouch Jr.,' his befuddled mind registered. The man had made Harry feel this way only once when he had placed him and his classmates under the Imperius Curse while they had been going over the Unforgivable Curses in class.

Harry tightened his fist and drew blood in his hand from his nails, puncturing the skin. The fog clouding his head was gone in its entirety. His vision sharpened and his mental processes returned to normal, firing on all cylinders.

Harry drew his wand and pointed its tip in a wide arc. His green eyes narrowed and his teeth bared in a snarl, looking for whoever had put him under the mind-control curse. He didn't spare a moment to outwardly curse his own ignorance at being caught with his guard down with a total stranger in Verona. In a school full of potential future Death Eaters, he knew for sure. In a moment of lull, he had disregarded the constant vigilance preached by Mad-Eye Moody and even his impersonator. A moment without wariness and he was already under an Unforgivable.

From seemingly nowhere, a spell roared down the corridor, taking both Harry and Verona by surprise. The sudden magic hit Harry straight in the chest, eliciting a cry from his lungs as the air was knocked out of him, sending him crashing backward until his spine stopped with a loud crack against the hard mortar of the wall.

Verona avoided being clipped too by the streak of magic, flinching away as the spell sizzled past her skin. The witch shrieked at seeing the wizard next to her seemingly attacked out of thin air. Fumbling with her pocket, Verona tried to steady her shaking hand to draw her wand out. The girl's limb was in more of a panicked state than her faces' expression.

Verona was blasted backwards by another cast, a silent banishing spell, flinging the girl up into the air. Trying to right herself before her descent, Verona landed on her wand arm, crushing the bones of her hand between her torso and the stone; fracturing more bones tracing up the limb.

A sharp cry bounced off the ceilings and walls of the corridor. The sound nudged Harry into sitting upright.

Coming to focus from the sound ringing around him, Harry groaned in pain and leaned up against the wall to bring himself to slowly stand upright. Sweeping his eyes down the corridor for his attacker, Harry brought forth the birch wand, screaming a voiceless fury of its own. He couldn't see any perpetrator in front of him despite the corridor being well lit in the afternoon as the sun spilled through the arched windows and even the torches burned brightly in their iron cast moorings.

Harry held the wand steady despite being tossed like a sack of potatoes against the stones.

'Fucking idiot — should have checked that map.' A part of him wanted to pull the item from his pocket and scan it for his foe but he couldn't. Revealing such a treasured item before Verona or anyone was out of the question. In its current state, it was a bomb on his person, socially and legally. He needed to discover a way to use the map in public without fear of discovery or he'd have to go through with his plan of immolation.

Harry pushed himself free of the wall, his own two feet back underneath him growing steadier as the second flew by. Unable to see his attacker, Harry tried to trace them with his magic, attempting to spread his senses out down the corridor. Feedback resounded in his mind as if a taut cable had snapped, returning to its port of departure.

The failed action only succeeded in birthing a migraine between his ears. He was unable to perform the ability of sensing his foe magically like described in the Journal.

'Not my smartest play in a school full of Death Eaters again,' Harry thought bitterly. Shifting his gaze behind him briefly, the fallen form of Verona shot a dose of adrenaline through his body.

He needed to stop focusing on himself and on the bigger picture. There were two of them, and they were both under siege.

"Who's there? Show yourself! Stop hiding, coward!" Harry called out to the empty air in open challenge. He spotted no distortion of any space before him, the sign of a disillusionment charm covering someone. Whoever it was wasn't under the charm, or they were superb at its concealment.

Like he had been morosely expecting, Harry received no reply from their attacker or attackers, who opted to remain unseen and strike from the shadows.
The silence, broken only by the pained breathing of Verona, sent Harry's senses into overdrive. He had no idea where the next spell would strike; him or her.
Despite his new acquaintance's labored breaths, his ears were picking up the subtle sound of something else, like the shuffling of a boot on powder.

'The dust on the floor! Whoever they are… they're dragging their feet,' Harry deduced, his twitching ears recognizing the sound as a person inching forward but dragging one foot behind in a bid to limit footfalls. Tuning his ears, Harry tried to pinpoint their exact location, but it was near impossible to tell. They could be at any distance.

'None of this makes sense…' Harry thought, taking the lull in whatever this was to think on why someone who wanted to remain unknown wouldn't cover themselves in a silencing charm. Whoever they were was clearly impatient, or perhaps it wasn't a cause of them, but rather Harry and Verona?

'They saw an opportunity to take a shot and jumped at it… this is a rush job?' Harry pondered who would be so rushed to act as such. The list was potentially endless, but he could name a few impatient witches and wizards. It could be anyone, but also so few.

Harry considered flooding the corridor in front of him with a litany of spells capable of carving the flesh from a person's bones. The syllables to such a curse were on his lips when he stopped their formation. An image of Draco Malfoy lying in a pool of his blood on a bathroom floor flashed before his eyes. Could he do that again to someone? To another student? He had been wrong about the convictions of others before, but now more than ever when his stance was so steady, his resolve was shaking.

As if paying a toll, there was a price for Harry's momentary inaction.

Suddenly, Harry heard Verona cry out once again alongside the sharp snapping of bone within flesh. Had their attacker avoided him to directly strike out at her? Harry craned his neck to look out the corner of his eye at the girl to make sure she was okay and not under attack. This proved to be Harry's most foolish action of the morning and his fatal mistake.

With no warning or indication, Harry was hit point blank by a stunner, barely feeling the trace of magic burst to life only inches away from his face, illuminating his features in a scarlet light.

'How did they get that close—?!' his last thought before blackness overtook him.

---

Seeing the wizard stop for the briefest of pauses, Regulus allotted Harry no chance to counter his stunning spell. The distance was too short for the young man to physically dodge, nor did he have time to conjure a magical defense to spare himself. All it took was sending a small cutting curse at the downed form of Verona Jennings to ensure Evans was properly distracted and unable to react.

Regulus stood over the stunned and subdued Gryffindor with hot tears spilling from his eyes.

'Why couldn't you just follow fucking orders?' Regulus thought embittered. The young boy didn't want any of this to happen, let alone have to do it himself.

The young Death-Eater-To-Be saw a golden opportunity in Harry Evans alongside Jennings once more. 'Someone to do it for me,' he thought, removing the logic that he would still be the torturer even if he didn't cast the spells that did the act.

It would have given him an out in a way. He could have denied ever harming his own blood by going after someone she cared for.

That's how the young wizard going dark had been taught after all. You had to do the spells yourself and then you were a torturer, but there was still an intelligent thought in the back of his mind which didn't want to acknowledge its own existence. 'The Imperius Curse is its own form of torture too'.

He had summarized that the boy was slowly picking up on his location through his auditory senses, so he opted to take him out at point-blank range, risking discovery if the wizard had opted for a muggle approach and swung his fist blindly at the air instead of trying to slowly track him.

Regulus couldn't risk being captured or exposed in any way. His family needed him to perform this task perfectly. He had to do these acts for the Dark Lord for the greater good; his greater good.

Just as he sent the wizard crashing to the ground in a state of unconsciousness, Regulus turned his wand on Verona, his fellow Slytherin, who lay out on the ground in pain from her collapse.

The girl's eyes were dashing about the corridor, searching for who had cast the stunning curse on her companion.

Holding her wand in her hand once more, Verona cast a silent 'Homenum Revelio', something she had been hoping Evans would have been smart enough to conceive but it seemed the boy was the classic bull in the china shop when it came to dealing with threats. His finesse took a back burner.

The spell revealed to the witch that it was a person underneath an invisibility cloak, standing just before her and over Harry. Knowing that the person wouldn't be alerted to her spell yet, Verona tried to subtly move her wand point in their direction.

However, Regulus had been watching her like a hawk would its prey. It was an action not out of patience but rather hesitation, an attempt to seize his courage in the moment. His eyes tracked her wand movement as it slowly inched towards his direction.

'She knows … but how?' Regulus thought with interest, 'Of course it would be my cousin's protege to figure out an Invisibility Cloak under stress.'

Offering her the only kindness he could, Regulus pointed his wand down at the girl and stunned her as well. Her body went stiff against the ground as his spell made contact. She couldn't feel anything anymore, blackness overtaking her senses like a deep fog.

Regulus stood over his next victim, shaking his hand to rid the appendage of the small tremor in his fingers. With a tear in his eye, he whispered a bone-breaking curse which shattered the already broken bones in the arm she had fallen upon. Her stunned body offered no reaction to the cruel act of her bones crushing themselves further.

Regulus hated himself for feeling grateful that Jennings was stunned so that her screams would attract no passersby. Yet, he had to act quickly if he was to be successful.

With careful precision, Regulus began to break specific bones in the girl's body. Ones which would look the worst but be quick to mend. Knowing that his handlers would be looking for evidence she suffered, Regulus opted to banish several bones entirely from her body. The limbs were now laying loosely on the floor.

This time, with full control of his actions, Regulus tortured his victim willingly and carefully. He had to do so, but in a way that caused her the least pain.

Regulus knelt down and pulled a knife from his belt. He cut away a long lock of hair from the side of the girl's face. It wasn't a personal trophy but instead a piece to send to her father to make sure he complied with what he was ordered to do.

Looking the girl over, he knew he couldn't leave her like this without something else, there was the issue of her memory. His handlers would probe the victims or his own mind for what had occurred. Regulus knew he could rely on his own mental defenses to hide his secrets but he wasn't sure about Verona Jennings's capability in the art of Occlumency.

'I can't put her under a Maladied-Mind Curse either,' he thought in dismay. He would have preferred to perform that spell like he had on Wilkes, an attempt to ease the suffering he caused by giving them a momentary paradise.

The young boy placed his wand against the temple of the stunned girl's head, muttering an old spell from Black family magic that embedded fake memories into a person's consciousness.

Regulus added memories of an unknown figure breaking her bones with a spell before banishing her against a wall to further the damage done. While she was barely awake, clinging onto her consciousness, the young girl experienced having the Cruciatus Curse cast on her multiple times till she lost her will to stay awake, slipping into the dark much like her companion. He worked with slow and careful precision to not damage the girl's brain nor to reveal his own characteristics in the magic. It was a tedious but required effort.

With Verona Jenning's new reality firmly embedded, Regulus committed the memory he gave her to his own.

Nodding at his work, Regulus stood up and made sure his cloak was still around him. He knew no one was nearby, nor did either of his victims see any trace of him, but it was better to be paranoid about these things.

Regulus swallowed the bile in his throat at seeing the two stunned seventh-years. The young boy aimed his wand once more at the pair and cast a pain-relieving spell over both, hoping to ease any suffering they'd have upon reawakening.

It was the last kindness he could offer, but hopefully he had done enough to frighten Lord Jennings with the attack on his daughter.

With his task complete, Regulus retrieved and twisted the orb in his hand. Alerting his partners to the completion of his end, Regulus left the two stunned students in the corridor and made his way back to the dungeons to meet up with his two partners in the crime.

'I hope Avery and Mulciber didn't get carried away with Bones like they did last time,' the young Slytherin thought in a panic, hoping that more blood wouldn't be on his hands.

Jeanne Wilkes had yet to recover from her own attack, even after being transferred to St. Mungo's. It was likely they had seen the last of her for some time.

---

Avery and Mulciber had managed to sneak back to their dorms, waiting for Regulus to return from his own part of the mission.

Avery may have blown their cover to their victims, but they were unsure about their young comrade. They needed to wait in case it was required to sneak Regulus out of the castle along with them.

Mulciber tried his best at bandaging his friend's eye, wrapping a white cloth around his friend's head, the color of it already beginning to stain scarlet. It was the only thing he could do, having never been adept at any healing spells. Avery would have to settle for the simple bandage over his damaged organ.

'He's going to lose this eye if he can't get treatment soon… going to the hospital or even St. Mungo's is out of the question.' They'd be caught if discovered in the Hospital wing at the same time as their victims were found and brought to the ward as well.

"Oi! Watch it, you bastard! Careful how tight you wrap that," Avery hissed. The muscles of his face flinched under even the gentlest of Mulciber's touch, pain flaring in his socket down to his jaw from the curse Bones had landed on him. The barest movement was agonizing.

"Where the fuck is that kid!?"

"He should be coming back soon; the attacks should have happened at the same time. Regulus would have had little issue with Jennings if he kept his cloak on him," Mulciber reassured. That was the hope at least. For all they knew, Regulus had been caught and was singing already to Dumbledore.

"Merlin, we've really stepped into a pile of hippogriff shit now…" Mulciber whispered in a low tone. His voice was laced with regret. "We shouldn't have used an Unforgivable for this... on them." His face twisted in emotion at just what they had done, at the violence Avery and himself had displayed.

Had they gone too far? Too much for the mission? None of them had been told explicitly how to go about accomplishing their task, just to make sure the lords opposing the Malfoy's plan received the message.

In a bid to please their lord, who often favored extremes, they resorted to such measures themselves.

The children who had been selected were those of lords who were either close to the fence or so far opposed, like Lord Bones, that even an attack on his blood wouldn't sway them. It was a pure fear tactic to make sure the rest of the Wizengamot knew the dangers of their decisions.

What clearer message was there than, 'Vote yes, or your child will suffer the consequences'?

Avery watched as Mulciber battled with his conscience, his own face bearing indifference juxtaposed to his partner's newfound grief. Like a shark tempted by blood, he struck at the weakness before him, capitalizing on Mulciber's crumbling resolve.

With one hand, Avery yanked Mulciber by his collar, down to where they were eye-level with one another. With his free hand, Avery tore the bandage up from his ruined eye, staring intensely into Mulciber's own orbs with his own— one destroyed orb and a single bright blue electric eye.

"What's done is done— and we had to do it, Brute! It had to be done, you hear me!? Don't go snivelling shit on me now." Avery's tone was tense from his own frustration with the fellow acolyte. He already had to deal with one Regulus Black, he didn't need two.

"We had to do it and we did it in the best way we could… make it look like an accident… make it untraceable. Those were the only rules! We may have failed that but it was still a success! A success, you hear! We'll be honored… we'll be given glory… all at his side," Avery raved, shaking Mulciber for a moment as if to let his words rattle the boy physically too.

"We had a golden opportunity with that blood traitor being there. So why not try to frame him for the attack on Bones, eh? We knew she wouldn't be alone. We knew there would be someone around her. At least we got a chance to put a blood traitor in their place."

Avery shoved Mulciber away from him, making the wizard stumble backwards, reaching out with an arm to catch himself on the framed poster bed before crashing to the floor.

"I fucked up showing myself early, I'll own up to that mistake. But Bones—Bones was good," Avery admitted, gesturing to his destroyed socket. He had underestimated the witch, and it had cost him dearly so far, if his eye was anything to go by. "She had a cool head on her the whole time… and you didn't take her out. You could have taken her down from behind quickly. You should have… this fucking mess is on you. Remember that when we're before the Dark Lord."

Having made his point, the blinded wizard retrieved the cloth for his wound. Avery snapped again as he reapplied his bandage over his wound himself. He could barely see anything out of his eye now beyond shapes created in the shadow, but even then, that sight was quickly vanishing.

Mulciber nodded, understanding what was being asked of him. The young wizard understood that despite his own failings, Avery was going to throw him under the bus. Mulciber's mind drifted to the letter he had stashed in his own pocket from Sirius Black's. 'It's my only insurance now after this whole debacle.' He moved his hand to his pocket, afraid the letter would jump out and into Avery's greedy hands.

"He heard you talk to me though, didn't he, Josephius?"

Mulciber replayed it all over in his head. The attack, finding the paper, and then consequently forgetting to wipe his memory. 'Fuck.'

"Black knows. He knows who we are." Mulciber stated. He should put the boy straight out of his misery instead of taunting him as he did. He shouldn't have toyed with his food, but it appeared neither of the pair had learned from their sins against Jeanne Wilkes.

Avery questioningly glanced towards Mulciber; his damaged eye now covered. "You wiped his memory, didn't you?"

Mulciber didn't know what to say, so he only shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry… I forgot to, in the moment," he softly mumbled, seeking absolution. Not knowing how, nor wanting to bring up his distraction.

Avery glared at the wizard with his one good eye.

"You fucking fool! You've made us—to them all," he hissed, not willing to take his own portion of responsibility. It had been him initially who had revealed Mulciber from the shadows. They had both been fools, but Avery wasn't willing to hitch his wagon to that train.

"We'll have to leave the castle. The staff were already looking for us before, but once Black or Bones wake up, they'll spill on us first thing. We need to be gone by then," Avery insisted, racking his brain for a plot to get out of the castle with no one the wiser.

"Leave? We can't leave, Joseph. How about our NEWTs? Our education?" Mulciber inquired, wondering just what Avery was plotting now.

"Fuck our education! When they wake up— they'll tell the first person of authority what we did. You were supposed to wipe Black's fucking memory! Bones will be dead if Morgana-be-blessed. Besides, our education here is over — the Dark Lord — he has more to offer than that fucking crook, Dumbledore." Avery decreed.

Mulciber nodded his head, the lump in his throat from it all dissolving steadily. "You— you're right, Josephius. We still need to wait for Regulus, though. If he was discovered as well by Jennings then we'll need to flee with him. The Dark Lord nor the Blacks would appreciate losing an heir like him," Mulciber reminded his partner.

The two waited for tens of minutes until Regulus entered the dormitory room. The fourth-year looked sickly and pale to them in the dark light of the dorm room. The two older Slytherins smiled at their partner in crime.

"Based on the look of you, I think it's safe to say you didn't need our assistance this time?" Mulciber asked, taking note that the boy seemed squeamish, but better than how he looked after the attack on Jeanne Wilkes.

"It's done," Regulus confirmed, showing the two boys a lock of brown hair with its edges darkened by blood.

The two older boys nodded appreciatively. "So, what did you do to her, eh?" Mulciber asked with a smirk. Regulus shook his head at the older Slytherins' apparent enjoyment of their task.

"I broke her bones and held her under Cruciatus for some time, like I was told," Regulus answered vaguely, not offering any details.

Avery's eyes tightened into a skeptical squint as he scrutinized the boy, doubtful of the boy's words. His gaze lingered for a moment of the stained lock of hair. Meanwhile, Mulciber gave a curt nod, not inspecting the lock closely, signaling his approval of Regulus's actions.

However, his approval of their young charge didn't stop Mulciber from grabbing the boy by his shoulder and forcing him to sit down on the bed opposite them.

"Were you seen though?" Mulciber asked. His eyes scanned over the young boy for any signs of damage from a duel or giveaways that he could be lying to them.

However, Regulus shook his head at the older boy, maintaining his Black façade in front of his older peers. He took note that Avery was holding a bandage to the front of his face; its white linen was staining red with blood now, dyeing much of the cloth.

"No. I was under my cloak the whole time. Jennings wasn't alone though, I tried to put the wizard she was with under the Imperius Curse to perform the attack in my stead but he resisted. So, I stunned him point blank so he couldn't further interfere," Regulus reported to his handlers, telling them the events which occurred outside the abandoned classroom.

"Good, your cover is solid then. My cover was blown and so was Brute's potentially," Avery hissed out from behind his bandage. "For safety and the mission, Brutus and I are going to be fleeing the castle—soon. You go fetch Pettigrew, Black. If anyone knows a way out of this castle without Dumbledore being the wiser, it's that cowardly cunt," Avery cursed, spitting on top of the floor of their dormitory.

Both Regulus and Mulciber scrunched their faces at the act, but they could see just how much pain Avery was in for disregarding the customs they were all brought up in.

"Time is of the essence at the moment, and we can't waste a minute of it. Pettigrew needs to start pulling his weight," Avery suggested to the pair. Both Regulus and Mulciber nodded. They knew Pettigrew had been given his own mission to carry out, and the boy had done so sufficiently so far.

They had more blackmail on future lords, along with other prominent witches and wizards, than they knew what to do with. The information would be used effectively in the coming months and years, surely.

None of the Slytherins wanted to involve the rat-like Gryffindor with their own plot, but they all knew that escaping without his aid would be a difficult affair. It also offered the potential option of holding extra blackmail over the rodential wizard to make sure he was committed to their cause.

They could disregard Pettigrew as much as they liked for his cowardly mentality, but they all held a subtle candle of respect for how effective of a spy he potentially would be if his relationship with the movement continued.

Regulus nodded to his older companions and stood up. "I'll send a message to him now; be ready to get out in half an hour then, Avery. Mulciber, you'll need to take him to a healer immediately if we want to try to save his eye. Apparate the moment you are outside the ward line," Regulus suggested to the pair.

Regulus left the room to send the message on to Pettigrew, the entire way hiding a smile from gracing his lips in front of anyone about.

He had elected not to tell Avery or Mulciber about the bottle of Dittany that he kept in his trunk which was capable of saving the wizard's failing eye. If the wizard went blind in one eye, then that was his issue and Regulus's victory. Regulus knew the Dark Lord wouldn't favor a follower who was crippled in any way.

It was a willing act of resistance that Regulus took against those he had fallen into bed with.

In half an hour, a rat scurried out of a crack in the dungeon wall. In a moment, it was not a gray speckled rat but Peter Pettigrew before the three Slytherins. Avery and Mulciber felt a bile of disgust for the small Gryffindor while Regulus only felt a pang of guilt for him. It was on his suggestion that they press him into being their informant within the castle. He had assumed the blackmail of his illegal animagus form alongside his brother and friends would have been sufficient. Some did not share his sentiment and opted to target Peter's family to ensure the boy's corporation.

Avery glared at the boy, his nose turning up at the sight of the young man's already balding head while Mulciber nudged him with a sharp elbow to cease.

"Reg— B-Black, I got your message. I came as quickly as I—I could… Avery… Mulciber," Pettigrew's words trembled. Feigning reverence to them, Peter prostrated himself before Regulus. He also nodded his head down in greeting at the two older students in a second attempt to curry favor.

"How can I be of service?"

He was curious about the reasoning of his summon. The message delivered from Regulus hadn't requested any information nor had it detailed why he was being called upon—only to show up to the dungeon's dorms with all haste.

Peter had hoped that the fanatical purebloods had forgotten him to the background like many tended to do, out of fear and an obligation, desiring not to reveal too much of his friends. He didn't revel in his assigned tasks nor did he enjoy the bead of excitement or the moments of weakness he felt in small lapses of their gratitude, much to his inner-shame.

The feelings collided in Pettigrew like hot and cold underneath his skin.

Regulus observed his informant, grappling to himself if he should spare his fellows from their own damnation, but he needed to ferry them away from the school. To protect himself, 'and everyone else in the school,' he thought, considering the violence within the two boys.

"Avery and Mulciber have compromised themselves in their task. Pettigrew, you are to escort them out of the school grounds to safety so they can flee back persecution. Time is of the essence for this and the hour is already late," Regulus ordered, enjoying the opportunity to disparage the two older accomplices with their failure.

Avery and Mulciber shared a look between the two of them as if they had consumed a sour treat or drank spoilt milk. Neither pleased with Regulus' idea to spirit them away to safety. While Pettigrew may have been a pureblood as well, he wasn't anywhere near the same pedigree as their stock.

"Escort them off the grounds?" Peter repeated the assignment on his tongue, pondering it over. He had seen the states of Sirius, Harry, Bones and Jennings. In truth, he was disgusted by the actions of those before him, but he was in position to preside over them. He felt a traitorous brand on his skin at the thought of aiding anyone who had harmed his fellow Marauder. Delivering information was one thing… but this was graduating into a new class of conspiracy.

"Can you do it or not, you fucking gobshite?" Avery sneered, growing tired of watching the rat before him snivel like a rodent caught between two traps.

"Y–yes, it can be done…there just aren't many ways available —," Peter hesitated to reveal his knowledge to the three wizards. It was one of the few reasons he felt in his insecurities that anyone kept him around after all.

Peter had crafted two images which he was struggling to maintain now in this moment, as each vied for dominance over his personality. To appear as the dutiful slave-of-sorts to Regulus, performing as bid? To resign himself to a deeper instinct, to seek out praise for his own name and talents by truly committing to the task? Or could he just simply be a Marauder?

He couldn't just be a Marauder however, as much as he wanted to rely on his friends at this moment. Peter feared the reception his plea would spark. Sirius would be unforgiving and furious with him forever in aiding the people who attacked him, let alone his younger brother. The others would potentially follow his opinion. The flicker of shame grew into a full torch inside Peter at this conclusion. He was alone in this.

Avery, however, lost his composure with Pettigrew finally, angered at his own blunder of revealing Brutus. Furious at him for not taking out Bones quick enough to spare his eye and incensed at the idea of fleeing into the night like a criminal instead of the hero he was for his cause.

"Oh, cut the crap! You're a cowardly, sniveling little shit!" he cursed, drawing his wand on the Gryffindor.

Mulciber immediately reached out and held his fellow seventh-year down to prevent him from harming their only means of escape at the moment and from further aggravating his wound. Deciding to take over for his companion, he picked up his own harsh glare for Pettigrew.

"You know more ways around this castle than even the Bloody fucking Baron. You are going to get us out of here with no one being the wiser, or else I'll tell Dolohov to visit your mother in the night, eh? I'm sure that'll be a visit all parties would enjoy," Mulciber threatened, letting his words weigh on the pudgy wizard.

Peter's face went white at the threat and shook his head fiercely. "N-no — n-need! I know a path for all three of us," he asserted, masking his reluctance with bravado. He was thoroughly cowed into aiding the Death-Eaters in their flight from the school grounds.

"Good, then you're no longer needed here. Wait near the entrance to the dungeons, Pettigrew. we'll join you there once we settle… some affairs between each other," Avery told the cowering boy, darting his eyes over to Mulciber as if sharing a thought with the wizard. With a wave of his hand, as if he had summoned the cowardly Gryffindor himself, Avery waved off Peter. Dismissing the boy entirely.

Understanding the unspoken threat, Peter nodded before changing back into his animagus form. Before scurrying out of the room, Peter locked eyes with Regulus. As if the two shared a momentarily understanding with the other that while Regulus may be capable of giving him orders as an underling. They both held a shared title between them. Each was a prisoner of the circumstances.

Mulciber turned to Regulus now. "We'll set out shortly; the sooner, the better. They won't expect us to sneak off before dark, so we'll use that to our advantage, since we won't have long till Amelia wakes up and blabs. You're to report to the Lestrange's now, Rodolphus before Rabastan though," Brutus ordered their younger charge.

Regulus nodded. Thankful that his task was soon to be over. Hopefully, he had proven to the Dark Lord and the Inner Circle that he was reliable to the cause; the words of his mother came to him.

"You'll make our noble house proud. You'll be the pinnacle of what it means to be a Black."

Was he through? Regulus felt nothing like his brother or even his grandfather, Arcturus, who many praised as being the epitome of what it meant to be a Black.

"Wait — before you go Black. What did you do to Jennings, exactly?" Avery asked, repeating Mulciber's earlier question. He watched the boy like a spider observing a struggling fly caught in its web.

Regulus felt the older Slytherin probe his Occlumency shields, Avery frowned at the young boy's defenses as he was unable to glean anything from the young Black. The walls around Regulus' mind were strong, stronger than even his or Mulciber's. Regulus raised an eyebrow at Avery, not commenting on the disrespect of using Legilimency on one another.

"She broke her arm in the attack. So, I merely finished what she began herself. I then put her under the Cruciatus Curse for good measure," Regulus answered emotionlessly and politically, hoping to appease the dark wizard once more.

Avery's singular good eye remained fixed on Regulus, looking for any betrayal in the boy. Quick as the flash of lightning, Avery flicked his wand, hissed, "Crucio!". Putting the fourth-year under the cruel spell, red and green sparks flew from the tip of the boy's wand—the only sign of the spell's activation.

Regulus collapsed to the floor, his nerves on fire. The sensation of his skin melting, his blood vessels bursting within his body, his very cells dying was over every inch of his body. His mind wasn't spared either with the most gruesome images flashing before his eyes, scenes that were not real but with the pain Regulus was unable to discern reality from the cruel fantasy.

Regulus no longer knew if he was re-experiencing his past, experiencing his present, or having a revelation of his future.

After a few seconds in what felt like hours or days to Regulus, Avery ended the spell and lifted the Unforgivable from the boy. Mulciber watched silently, daunted by the display.

Josephius Avery was a hot-head on his best days and cruel on the same ones.

The fourth-year Slytherin twitched upon the ground before the two older students, frothing from the mouth with blood coming from its corner, having bit his cheek through during the incident. Regulus's skin was pale and clammy, sweat gleaning off it like he had been exposed to actual heat from a close flame.

"You may be a Black, Regulus. That may mean something outside here and to the Dark Lord, but remember who your betters are. Make me think you're lying again, and I'll make you plead for mutilation to stop the pain," Avery snarled, grabbing the nearly unconscious child by the face.

Avery slammed Regulus's face into the floor, leaving the boy sprawled out and unconscious.

"Let's go Brute. We needed to be gone a while ago," Avery ordered, packing his trunk and shrinking it with a flick of his wand. Mulciber followed suit with his own belongings.

As the two left the dorm and exited the Slytherin Common Room, leaving their young charge still on their dormitory floor, Mulciber had to ask.

"Joseph, was the kid really lying, or was that all just you're making a point?"

Avery looked over at his friend since before they had entered Hogwarts together.

"I'm not sure if he was lying, Brute. His mental shields were too good to tell. The kid thinks he's slick, but it's easy to tell he doesn't have the stomach for some of this. He has a lot to prove if he wants to serve the Dark Lord properly," Avery recounted.

The pair walked in silence, off to meet up with their guide out of the castle and to freedom from their cruel acts against their fellow students.

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Sayre Journal Appendix - #1

Spells

'Gorgos Amia' — The ſpell is denoted by the green colour of its nature. When it ſtriketh the victim, the ſpell will break into an ectoplaſm which burneth away phyſical ſubſtances.

'Tria-Incarcerous' — A tranſfiguration ſpell of mine own, an improvement upon Incarcerous. Inſtead of a ſimple rope being conjured forth, it is animated and brought to life. The rope will bind any joints to the target's torſo, and conſtrict around their neck as well, eventually breaking their windpipe and caving in their cheſt from preſſure built.

'Ignis aurum' — Conjureth forth a magickal blue fire that is ſafe to the touch. It can reſide on objects and even in the air when paired with the Flagrate Incantation. The flames can be uſed to devise runes upon ſurfaces in typical and nontypical ways to activate their magick.

'Gai-eidolon' — Conjureth powerful and malevolent ſpirits to attack the victim of the ſpell. The ſpirits ſummoned forth are Gytrashes, a ſort of luminous dog-like creature with a forked tail.

'Phantasma Lignae' — A charm upon the wand, ſummoneth forth the ſpirit of the magickal core, which can only be held back through magickal means. It will bypaſs any phyſical ſhield or obſtacle.

'Naithar flagellum' — A tranſfiguration ſpell that changeth the rope from the Incarcerous ſpell into a boa conſtrictor. The ſerpent will latch on and reel the victim towards the caſter without the need for orders.

'Bellus' — A tranſfiguration ſpell that changeth the appearance of the caſter, altering their phyſical features to their deſired deſign in a permanent manner until uncaſt. The nature of the tranſformation maketh it nigh undetectable, yet to uſe the ſpell is to endure extreme pain.

Runes

'Algiz', 𐌙 — A Nordic nullifying protection rune. It abſorbeth the magick from any ſpell caſt within its vicinity.

'Thurisazic', ᚦ — A Nordic Faldrak offensive rune. It will absorb the water from a source.

'Ing', ᛝ — A Nordic Faldrak Rune protection rune. Creates a stasis area around an object or caster, where the area can't be disturbed physically or magically.

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A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter - it was hell to write. As always, if you spot any errors please let me know and I'll get to editing them out. Ignis aurum is the blue-bell flame that Hermione is known to use in the books, the spell has no listed incantation and I gave it to Gormlaith as one of her creations.