AN: I know many have been waiting a long time for this. Trust me. I never forgot about you. I had a serious project I had to finish the second draft of.
Wrath

You know about anger.

Anger was a stupid, miserable man who murdered thousands of people with his own hand. Who tore his own soul apart, who killed your parents, who believed some prophecy that never would have happened had he not read it. Who was arrogant enough, stupid enough to believe he had found a way to cheat death.

Anger was spending years of your life in a cupboard under the stairs. It was an uncle who hated you because he could never quite understand that there was more to the world than business meetings and electric drills. It an aunt who hated you because you were a daily reminder that some people could do magic and some could not. Who blamed who as though you had asked for it, as if you had personally bribed the Hand of Fate itself for the ability.

Anger was a blonde boy with all the mental constitution and fortitude of a butterfly. Who was always fine when bullying students, perfectly fine when his parents or his two tops were around to protect him. But the second you pointed a wand in his face, boy-howdy, you could damn near make a whole ocean with the tears and piss that would be coming out of him.

Anger was a Potions teacher that never took points from his House, even if they broke the rules right in front of his face. Who picked on children. Who picked on you, because you were a daily reminder to him as well. A reminder that the woman he loved had stopped chosen someone else over him, because he called her the wizarding world equivalent of nigger or kike or camel fucker or whatever term you like, ladies and gentleman. Because clearly she should have loved being called a mudblood. Hell, she should have fallen to her knees and thanked him for the opportunity to be insulted in such a personal manner.

Anger was one of your two best friends thinking you somehow put your own name into a goblet, that you couldn't have put your name into. So that you, a 15-year old kid, would have the honor of taking place in a tournament where you could have been incinerated by a dragon or drowned by a mermaid. Because you're such a glory hog, you know. That's what everyone keeps telling you. All you want is for people to sing your accomplishments praises from the damn rooftops. Who cared about such a trivial matter as an excruciating death?

Anger was seeing the body of Cedric Diggory. The man hadn't been just "a spare" to him.

Anger was a pompous git of a Minister who thought you were lying about the resurrection of the most dangerous dark wizard of all time. Because, just like that name-in-the-goblet thing, false stories about dark wizards are just something you apparently do in your spare time. And there's a whole media campaign about how much of a lying pile of shit you are. You just want attention. It's always about attention with you. Why are you so vain, such a glory hound, such a Prince Vegeta? And then it turns out the dark wizard was revived after all. Oopsie-daisy. Sorry boy. Turned out we were wrong after all. No hard feelings, and—by the way—can you show up in a press conference and talk about how awesome a Minister I am, and about how I didn't screw the pooch so hard it had to be left in the bathroom with a jar of soothing cream?

Anger was a permanent scar on the back of your hand, because you must not tell lies. It was pages and pages of parchment paper filled with letters and sentences of your own damn blood. It was a fat toad of a woman in a pink dress smiling pleasantly at you and drinking tea as she tortured you.

Anger was seeing the body of Dumbledore.

Anger was that same best friend from before abandoning you in the woods, because he thinks you want your other best friend. When you've never hit on her, never dated her, never thought of her as anything but a sister. Hell, you knew he liked her. Everyone knew it. It was about as well hidden as a Dark Mark in the sky. And so now you're down from three to two, and the Horcrux you guys are journeying with is pissing you off 50 percent of the time instead of 33.

Anger was walking through the ruins of Hogwarts and seeing the bodies of people you've known for years. People you counted on, people you loved, people you couldn't imagine your life without but now you don't have a choice.

Anger is a redheaded girl who you loved for years hiding from you what she was, and what you were to her. Because you weren't really her boyfriend. You were instead her last chance to be straight. It was this girl telling you one day that it's over, and by the time you finally get to her in person to figure out what's going on, she tells you she already had a one-stand…when she never put out for you after three years.

You throw a dark curse at her. The same one you used in that bathroom a decade ago. The same one that you promised to never use again. The same one that, ironically, a certain significant other would turn out to be rather fond of. Your hand jerks to the right at the last millisecond and you tear apart a curtain instead of her. But the damage is already done. It's in the news for week, and you almost lose your new Auror job over it—and you would have lost it had Minister Kingsley not smoothed things over.

But there's no smoothing things over with your best friends. You almost lose them over it. You almost lose your ex's family over it. The father threatens to hit you, her second oldest brother does hit you, and the surviving twin is still too depressed to really care. Her mother, however, is too forgiving, almost achingly so. It takes a whole a novel's worth of apologies and close to fifteen years for the bonds with that wonderful family to be even half of what they had been before. Because you don't even mean the apologies, at least none that you say to her. You try to mean them, you want to mean them, but your mind drifts back to those long, lonely, tearful nights where you cried yourself to sleep. Those nights where it felt like your groin was slowly lighting on your fire as you wondered what she might be up to this time of time, what kinds of thing was she doing to someone who wasn't you? Those nights where your mind fills with sweet, dark thoughts. Things you won't speak of. Not to a therapist, not to God, not to anyone. Thoughts that would perhaps make even someone like Tom Riddle flinch and turn away.

Then against all odds and reason, a woman is arranged to marry you. A woman from your school, one you had never noticed the whole time. A Slytherin woman who is more vocally anti-purity than any Gryffindor or Hufflepuff you had ever known. Who attacked her fellow House members for it. You were so obsessed with your ex, but now all you can think of is your wife. Your wife whose favorite food was grape leaves, who loved to duel as much as you did, who wrote a book of poetry but never published it, who never laughed without snorting. Your man-loving, anti-purity, dark-haired, big-nosed, Raven-Patronus-having, Slytherin wife. And you fall asleep next to her wondering how you could have ever wanted anyone else.

But then your wife tells you one fine day that she's the leader of a criminal organization, a terrorist group that perhaps even eclipsed the Death Eaters in terms of scope. Hundreds of casualties from bombings. Hundreds of thousands of kidnappings, most still unaccounted for, and which may never be accounted for. A wife full of excuses about broken bones and nukes and paupers and whatever else she had been on about. All of this is laid directly at your feet like a vat of liquid horseshit heated to a boil. And it's all fine and dandy. It's all rainbows and unicorns. It's all a 9 out of 10—could recommend—because she fucking loves you. Love justified everything. Love made the tragedies just not count. Love, to quote Deon Jackson: "Makes the world go 'round."

So the anger reaches a new summit, with new view of new horizons and every single one was red like blood.

And just when you thought it can't get any worse, just when you thought you've reached the pinnacle of bubbling rage, just when it seemed like the abyss wouldn't get any deeper—that it couldn't get any deeper—the woman you married turned around and grievously wounds your youngest son with a curse.

And what you feel next eclipses everything else. Every other time you've been angered has been blotted out. Your vision goes from a cone to a tunnel. There's a terrible ringing in your ears. You have a headache going on…one you can sense but not feel. There's no memory of what was, and no knowledge of what is, and no speculation of what may be. Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing connects. You don't know why you're in a dark room in an empty office. You don't know why you have two white hands. You don't know how old you are. You don't know if you're a man or a woman or that technicolor rainbow in between. You don't even know your own name.

All you know is that the people you're fucked off with have momentarily turned their backs to you. You know that the top-left compartment of your desk has three or so copies of your phoenix-core wand. You know the bearings and wood is greased to make as little noise as possible.

You know wordless magic, so that the people in front of you don't realize a stunning charm has been cast until it's crossed half the distance. Only your wife has the reflexes to put up a shield in time, casting it without turning around. Everyone else turns around to look first, and one after another, they are thrown across the room to crash into the wall on the opposite side. There's meaty thud of their bodies hitting the floor, then the clatter of portraits knocked loose from their fixtures.

Your wife runs for any kind of cover she can find. Cubicles that you evaporate. Walls that you destroy. You think that she'll flee, but she fights instead with stunning charms of her own. She is content to fight in the Auror office at first. Then a wave of disarming charms from somewhere forces her towards the open door her allies had come through. Someone screams something you can't make out. You race towards the door and someone comes up beside you, a little copy of yourself. He tries to say something and you viciously shove him aside with a grunt.

You follow your wife into the hall. She fires off another wounding curse you avoid, at the same timing firing off a disarming charm that she once again shields. You chase her from one hallway to the next. The charms and curses go back and forth like gunfighting. Walls crack. Statues shatter into dust. Portraits are torn to pieces. Until at last you reach the double doors and find yourself outside, into air that should be cool but was instead burning hot.

Your wife stumbles down the stairs. You throw another charm and this time the shield can't come up fast enough. Her wand goes flying. She curses, then turns around and stares at you for a moment. You should stun her immediately…but that ship had sailed a long time ago. Sure. You will stun her, but not right now. Right now, you want her wide awake for everything that happens next. Because you won't use the Unforgivable Curses. None of them, not even now. But that still left you with a lot of options.

Plenty.

You hit her with a knockback jinx that sends her to the ground. Her body slides for a few feet before coming to a rest. What next? Whatever next? You use Wingardium to lift her thirty feet into the air and just let her fall, not caring how she was oriented, not caring if something broke. She hits the ground and there's a snap as something does. She screams and clutches her right leg.

He point the wand at her to do it again—quite a few bones left to go after all—and that's when there's an orange flash of light, and your wand sets sail for parts unknown. Confused, somewhat dazed even, you turn. It's your daughter. Her eyes are wide with fright, but she's smiling too.

Clarity hits you. No, it slams you. It rocks you on your feet. And with the clarity, realization. And with realization, tears.

"Delphi…" you say, the words choked with tears and misery. "I didn't…"

You want to say more, but there are no words. None. You look around, dazed, defensive, as if people might Apparate in a circle around you, pointing and accusing you of murder. You are garbage. You deserve death for what you done, for what you've allowed to happen. And you walk towards your daughter with your hands out, begging, pleading. You're sure she's one of them too. You don't care. You just want her to understand you didn't mean for all this to happen, and if you could, you would take it all back,

Your daughter however, isn't interested in what you wanted, or what you meant, or what you wanted to take back. She's only interested in stunning you.

And you don't wake up until dawn, in St. Mungo's, to the concerned face of Dr. Padma Patel. She smiles with relief when you awaken. She looks beautiful.

You say two words. They're the only words that matter: "My kids."

"James just has a bruised shoulder. Albus lost a lot of blood but he's stable now."

The relief was crushing, almost painful. You weep.

"Ria. My daughter."

Padma shook her head. "Gone. I'm sorry."

The world had changed. The wrath from before had evaporated like cotton candy on the tongue. In its place was sorrow, sweeping towards you in a dark tide.

Sorrow. Yeah. You know a lot about that as well.