Disclaimer: Characters and trappings borrowed from the Harry Potter books are the property of J.K. Rowling, and no copyright inftringement is intended.
A solitary figure sat in hushed darkness. The stone walls of his windowless cell were dank and chill. The blackness was complete save for a feeble rectangle of flickering amber which was the torch burning in the corridor just beyond the tiny view slit in the heavy iron door. It was by choice that the cell's lone occupant sat thus. A gnarled candle, Charmed to ignite by wandless command (and enchanted to burn with a harmless cold flame), reposed in a rusty iron bracket above his cot, its wick cold and layered with dust.
Without warning, the slit of light winked out, blocked by the face of the guard who peered blindly into the darkness, his piggy eyes watering. "Visitor," he grunted in an emotionless monotone, quoting from rote. "Stand back from the door, please."
The magical lock on the door clicked. Pale light flooded the small cell, glinting dully on the rivets ringing the door. A dancing shadow fell across the threshold, followed by a tall figure whose features were obscured by the darkness. The newcomer held an oil lamp in an outstretched hand, its chimney raised. The guard extended his wand (the other's wand having been confiscated), and the lamp sprang to life. The flame brightened as the chimney was slid home, illuminating a long, freckled face and a shock of red hair nearly as bright as the lamp in its owner's hand.
"Leave us," the visitor said. Without a word, the guard closed the door. The lock clicked.
Setting the lamp on a shelf next to the lifeless candle, Ron Weasley sat on the edge of the cot, the ancient springs of which groaned in protest. The prisoner had not moved in all this time, nor betrayed even the smallest sign of acknowledgment that he was no longer alone. Ron felt the skin between his shoulders crawl. It was as if he were sitting next to an upright corpse.
"Tell me you didn't do it, Harry," Ron said without preamble. "I told them they're all mental. You couldn't possibly have done what they say you did. Tell me, Harry."
Harry did not move, did not so much as turn his head a millimeter in Ron's direction. But his glassy, far-seeing eyes came to life as at the flicking of a switch. Those eyes, pale green in the lamplight, jerked suddenly as if tugged by invisible wires as they pierced Ron's like emerald icicles.
"Merlin," Ron swore softly, his throat tightening. "It's true. You did it. You really did it! You killed Malfoy!"
At last Harry moved. Snatching his eyes from Ron's, he stood slowly and turned away, staring into the dark corner of the cell where the lamplight could not reach. Ron saw the slight hunch in Harry's shoulders, their eloquence wordless testimony to some great weight pressing upon his friend's soul. He dreaded the question he knew he must ask.
"What happened, Harry?" Ron croaked. "No one will tell me anything. You had to have a reason -- "
Suddenly Ron went white beneath the embers of his abundant freckles.
"Wh-where's -- where's Hermione? Why isn't she here? Why --
"No...oh, please, no..."
"She's alive," Harry said at last, his voice dry as dust from a tomb. Ron waited for Harry to continue, his heart filling with dread, but Harry said nothing more.
"Malfoy -- " Ron framed the syllables as if they were an obscenity. "What -- what did he do to her?"
Only silence answered him.
"What did he do?" Ron demanded, bolting up with knotted fists churning the air. "What did that son of a bitch do to Hermione?"
Ron saw Harry's shoulders drop almost imperceptibly, saw his friend shudder as if in silent agony.
"He raped her," Harry rasped, his hand rising to cover his face, as if to block images dancing in the darkness which only he could see.
As Ron gaped in horror, Harry rounded explosively, his eyes ablaze with green flames. Ron recoiled as if he had been struck a physical blow, the flesh between his shoulders crawling with a sensation as of ice water trickling down his spine.
"He tortured her!" Harry half screamed, half sobbed, his rage spilling out like lava from a poisoned volcano. "He chained her to a dungeon wall -- beat her savagely, whipped her until she cried for mercy! And then he ravaged her -- like a MAD DOG!"
As Ron began to tremble with unspeakable anguish, Harry's voice fell to an icy whisper.
"And I killed him like one. I put him down like the animal he was -- like a rabid wolf.
"But first, I made him suffer."
"You -- " Ron stammered fearfully, " -- you didn't use an -- an Unforgivable Curse -- ?"
Ron knew, as did most every person in the magical world, that use of any of the three Unforgivable Curses on a human being -- even a slime like Malfoy -- resulted in a life term in Azkaban. If Harry had tortured Malfoy thus, his fate was sealed. But Harry shook his head slowly.
"I put a Body-Bind on him," Harry said thickly. "I took him to...the Shrieking Shack. It was perfect. I knew no one would investigate if they heard anything. In fact, the more screaming they heard, the faster and farther they'd run away.
"And he did scream. Oh, yes..."
Harry's eyes took on a feral light before which Ron retreated another step.
"I intended to make him pay. Not just for that night, but for fifteen years of sneers and torments, of a thousand "Mudblood" taunts and racist, pureblood garbage.
"I conjured manacles and chained him to the basement wall," Harry said with a distant look in his eyes and a hint of ghastly savor in his voice. Fastening his eyes on Ron, he tittered, "Do you know what I did then? Do you?"
Ron shook his head, his tongue frozen to his palate.
"I exploded his bones," Harry hissed with malevolent glee.
Ron recoiled, horrified.
"I used a focused Incendio spell," Harry said, speaking not so much to Ron as merely reveling in a cherished memory. "I made his marrow boil until the bone popped like a wizard cracker. He screamed like a baby. It was exquisite.
"I began with his fingers. The fingers that desecrated my wife's flesh, profaned her dignity. The fingers that chained her to that filthy wall, that held the whip that drew her blood -- the dirty 'mudblood' that he so despised. And I made him watch! I Cursed his eyelids off and held him by the hair so he couldn't look away. And he watched as the bones in his fingers splintered, one by one."
Harry laughed insanely, the sound chilling Ron's blood and making his knees weak.
"He lived for three days," Harry whispered. "I fed him a potion that kept him conscious through the pain. Aurors carry it with them, so they can function in battle while wounded. I brewed it myself...learned it in Advanced Potions ages ago...Snape would have been proud of me.
"As the pain increased, he nearly went mad. For the first two days, he pleaded with me to stop, to have mercy. Mercy! I told him I'd show him the same mercy he showed Hermione." Harry barked a short, bitter laugh before his eyes hardened again. "On the third day, he begged me to kill him. At least once every five minutes, he sobbed, 'Kill me, Potter! For the love of God, kill me!' It was rather funny, actually -- Voldemort's lapdog invoking God after all those years of worshipping the devil himself. Truth to tell, the mantra became rather tiresome after a while. So, as much to shut him up as anything, I suppose...I gave him what he wanted."
Ron was sobbing mournfully, his face buried in his hands. Harry's voice grew strangely calm even as it assumed an edge as of tempered steel.
"He wasn't human. He was a monster -- a vampire. He sucked the lifeblood from everything he touched. And, well, there's only one proper way to sort out a vampire, isn't there? A stake through the heart. So I took his own wand and drove it through his ribs with a narrow-beam Banishing Charm. I nailed him to the wall like a cockroach.
"And the look on his face! Even at the last, he couldn't believe that goody-goody Potter had it in him! He just stared at me in astonishment as the light in his eyes faded and went out. Sort of like blowing out a candle flame, it was.
"It was too easy, you know," Harry said with a touch of disappointment. "After everything he'd done, all the lives he'd ruined, the death and misery he'd sown...I was far too easy on him...far...too easy..."
Ron did not hear Harry's last words. He had sunk to the floor, sobbing like a lost soul; weeping for his friend, for the inhuman thing he feared that cherished friend had become; and for the good, kind man whom he feared might be lost to him forever.
His catharsis exhausted, Harry fell silent once more. He sank heavily onto his cot, staring blanky at the wall, oblivious to the flickering light of the lamp, and to the soft, agonized sobs emanating from the huddled figure quivering on floor to his right.
Author's Note: So ends Chapter one of nine. The shadows deepen next week, with more facts being brought to light. I hope some of you, at least, will return. And to everyone, thanks for reading.