disclaimer:
Honestly, If I owned Harry Potter, I'd probably have enough money to buy my soul back from the supermarket. I'd probably be able to actually eat this week. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, I have nothing worth suing for, I'm only making Harry and Hermione do these nasty things because Jayu wanted me to and that I'm just doing this (much like my disclaimer) for fun.
Harry took his hand off of the wall of the crater that Hermione had left in the chamber. It had been two days since Hermione had done it and he still couldn't believe the damage the spell had done. Since she had taken the limits off of her magic, the vermin around the chamber of secrets that they usually practiced their spells on had taken to exploding for even the simplest of spells, such a legilimens.
Harry had commented once "Was that obliviate or obliterate?" Earning him a smirk.
Harry was glad that he could hold her in his embrace at night time. Dumbledore did not spend nights at the school according to the Marauder's map. Harry presumed he was off obliviating some hapless wizard who had strayed from the manipulative old man's pre-determined line.
Hermione had suggested they wait a few days for the start of November for Harry to do his personal training. The idea was that it would give Dumbledore enough time to punish her and think it was an individual, isolated incident. Hermione had told him that she needed a break due to the mental stress.
Dumbledore had been furious and had punished her to going through the forbidden forest with Hagrid, looking for a missing Thestral. It had taken them six days to find where it had flown to and twice, Hagrid had left Hermione on her own so that he could go to check something out. She had ranted for lengths at a time whenever it was brought up.
The time they spent together before November, a week and a half, was spent going through the Dark Arts books that Harry had brought. Hermione applied her keen studying skills to the books, she steered Harry away from useless spells like the shoelace knotting spell and more towards the kind that would cause people's tears to turn to acid. Harry had pointed out that with an onion-eyelids spell, they could cry all the skin off their faces. Hermione had, without very seriously, written the suggestion down.
Their duelling improved, but they suffered from the problem that they were starting to find their techniques repetitious. It was becoming a match to see who could dodge the spells in succession without making a screw-up, rather than who had the highest accuracy and who could be the sneakiest.
On the night of November 2nd, Harry walked to their secret hiding place carrying his unfinished assignments as Hermione has asked. The request seemed to be completely random, but Harry had faith in her reasoning.
As he handed the papers over, he questioned her, but she shook her head and smiled broadly as she said to him, "The shrieking shack is in the outskirts Hogsmeade, and the only entrance is at the base of the whomping willow."
Harry frowned at her. "I already knew" and then it clicked why she was telling him and he started laughing. "I can't believe it! You put the shrieking shack under fidelius? That is incredible Hermione!"
Harry's words of encouragement meant the world to her and she beamed with pride.
"I'm starting to wonder if there is a single spell you can't do."
She blushed and smiled.
Harry packed up his books and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips.
"You're going to go now then?"
Harry nodded. "Not fair you getting to do all the hard spells when I can barely pull enough magic to do them."
She nodded. "I'd like for you to be on the same level on me at the least." She held his hands. "Harry don't leave any evidence when you leave. I want to make sure that nobody finds out about this."
"Alright." He agreed and hesitantly started walking away.
"Harry! Be careful!" Hermione called.
He simply grinned back at her and left.
The shack was just as Harry had remembered; give or take a number of holes around the place that he knew hadn't been there before. The place where Hermione had actually performed the release was in the lounge room where what was once a rug had turned to stone and the wooden floorboards around it had been charred badly, but were surprisingly solid despite the fact.
There were holes all over the walls and through the furniture which glowed with an aura of their own. It gave Harry the distinct idea that at some point, Hermione had completely lost control of her magic. Worse than that was the fact that reparo did absolutely nothing to fix anything that had been touched by her magic.
Despite the fact the room seemed rather frail, the presence of her magic calmed Harry considerably. It reminded him that he wasn't just doing this for himself. He had someone to protect. It gently blew away the fear that Harry felt and allowed him to put the food he'd taken from the kitchen down on a desk and sit down on the stone mat, which still felt soft, despite its appearance.
Closing his eyes, Harry breathed deeply until he was calm enough to envision his faucet at the greatest detail. Breaking the tap off was not as simple as it sounded as there was nothing physical with which to hit it with. Turning the tap was a matter of willing it to turn, but to break it off with nothing more than willpower seemed a bit unrealistic, but that didn't stop him from trying it.
He played with the tap a lot, trying to turn it past its maximum and stupid things such as shaping the magic into a saw and attempting to cut off the tap, which was as effective as trying to knock down a castle wall using a garden hose.
Harry wished that he had asked Hermione how she had done it, but he hadn't, and she said nothing about the experience other than how painful it was.
He looked around the tap, looking for flaws, and apart from the drip that was consistent with what Hermione had said, found nothing. He applied pressure to the spot to make it stop dripping, which was simple enough, but hardly did the job of breaking the tap at all.
As a last ditch effort, Harry turned the tap onto its full capacity and willed the tap to plug closed. This had the effect of increasing the amount of leakage coming from the hole. He willed that closed too.
It was a hard effort to keep the outlets fully plugs and not to leak as the tap built up pressure immensely, but he held it as best he could. If this way were to work, he wouldn't get it by letting go. He willed the magic to build up pressure faster, and was rewarded by hearing the tap screech as it started to bulge.
He held the pressure for as long as he could. His head and his body started to feel weak, but he held it still, he needed the tap to go if he wanted any hope in saving Hermione's parents.
After ten hours of making the pressure build, the tap shattered, breaking into a hundred thousand pieces which flew in every direction at a speed so fast that it penetrated his mind-world and ripped from every pour in his body in the real world. Harry screamed from a pain far worse than the cruciatus curse. The pain of a thousand hot knives could not come close to the pain of your body being ripped apart as if it were its own worst enemy.
He struggled to keep his mind focussed on the source of his magic which without a faucet to limit the flow coming out of it was spilling out at a rate faster than Harry could hope to use with his current repertoire of spells.
When the pain subsided enough for Harry to immerse himself back where he was needed most, he pushed against his magic as hard as he could, but it was like trying to plug a dam using an acorn.
Harry spent four days fighting his flow of magic which was causing unusual effects to occur around him in the real world. The wooden walls and floors changed from wood to bronze, then plaster, then worms, diamond and finally to back to wood, while the fidelius warped from the blast of undirected, unorganised magic.
Remus Lupin lay in bed, one arm around his blue and pink haired lover.
He was reminiscing about his olden days, " I had to find somewhere to hide, to keep everyone safe from myself, so I stayed in the shrieking shack. You know that place in Oh now where was it That's right! It was in Ireland!"
"Ireland?" Tonks asked. "The shrieking shack I know was in Scandinavia."
"No wait Wasn't it in Holland?"
"Ah! Now I remember!" Tonks declared. "It was in the middle of the Thames, right under London Bridge."
"Oh yeah that's right, and the entrance was at Beauxbatons, right under Madame Maxine's desk."
" That's a bit of a hike just to get to your hiding spot are you sure you're not making this up?" She asked him.
"I kid you not! It was at under her desk!"
Harry finally started to make headway. He was tired, and he ached all over. What little vision he could gather from the real world suggested that he was bleeding all over and was in danger of dying if he didn't do something to stop the bleeding, but he couldn't do that without plugging the hole first. He was finally able to push against the magic and slowly, centimetre by centimetre, he pushed forwards, until on his sixth day after beginning, his hand met the wall, and he held it, despite numerous leaks pooling around the concentration of his resistance.
The longer that he held it, the easier it became and the further he was able to control, to stop the leaks.
For the longest time, Harry dare not venture into the real world, lest he break his concentration, but as it became easier to hold the flow of magic, six days of hunger caught up with him. He had lost a lot of weight in his fight against his magic and so, he slowly rose from his painful catatonic state in the real world where his blood had congealed, adhering his school robes to himself and almost gluing him to the grass rug he lay upon.
He was covered in scabs from head to toe and it was painful to move as the scabs pulled against the skin. Cautiously, Harry shaped a small amount of overflowing magic and rasped, "Accio food." It hurt like hell to move, but Harry wolfed down everything that didn't have glowing edges from residue magic.
He thought to try calling Dobby, but Dobby had no idea where he was so he wouldn't have been able to come anyway.
After eating everything he could, he fell asleep, and in his dreams, he was still pushing against his magic until it became instinctual to hold it closed at which point he started to wake up.
Harry felt weak and anaemic, but felt confident enough that he could keep his aura hidden when under disillusionment.
He moved to the passageway back to Hogwarts and released half of his power as he chanted, "Eradico"
He quickly started moving through the passageway while struggling to cap the magic that was escaping.
'It's going to take me a while to stop my magic after using it until I get used to this I think.' He thought to himself as a dust ball flew down the passageway. Harry didn't look back as the shrieking shack exploded, wiping every trace of the place away until there was nothing but a large crater left in the ground. It would make for an interesting sight when Hermione dropped her fidelius charm.
It took Harry an excruciatingly long time to get from the site back to Hogwarts. He wondered if it was as painful for Hermione as it was for him to move the distance. As he approached the whomping willow, he could see it was daytime outside, though he had no idea what day it actually was.
He double checked to make sure he wasn't leaking any magic and left for the Hospital Wing to liberate a blood replenishing potion and a skin-gro-better, the sun blinding him as soon as he was exposed to the outside atmosphere.
The feeling of complete invisibility gave Harry a sense of freedom the likes of which he had never experienced before in his life. With Madam Pomfrey looking after a young Hufflepuff's throat which periodically swelled up like a frog to produce a reverberating 'croak!', Harry was free to just wander into her office and take the potions and walk out without her being any the wiser.
From there, Harry moved to the chamber to wait until Hermione was free to come see him in the night and to give his body relief from all the movement.
Dumbledore grumbled to himself, his mind only half on the meeting.
"The Dark Lord is continuing negotiations with the dementors," Severus Snape announced from the back. "On top of that it would also seem he is taking in a fresh batch of Death Eaters, fresh out of your school headmaster."
Dumbledore shook his head, feigning disappointment. 'It matters not. Those lambs are easy enough to keep in their pens.'
"That is troubling." He told them. "We'll have to further efforts to make students aware of the dangers of joining Voldemort. I shall speak to our Defence teacher."
"With all due respect sir, the influx seems to be due to pressure from the children's parents who are all known Death Eaters, give or take a couple."
"Speaking of wayward students, has anybody had any luck finding Harry Potter?" The old man asked. The boy had eluded him for more than a week now which meant that either he was in a heavily warded area or under the fidelius. All of his attempts at finding the student had ended up with nothing, just like when Hermione Granger had disappeared. He wondered what the chances were that they were seeing each other at night while he was out of the school, but his spies in the dormitories had said that they were in bed all night without fail which was not to say that they couldn't be deceived, but it seemed unlikely.
After her hiatus, he had put detection wards in place on Granger's dormitory, and not once had they been triggered at night by her. He had investigated a couple of incidents to once find Padma Patil studying, and the other he found Lisa Turner stealing down to the kitchens for a midnight snack.
No, unless they had been passing notes on paper, he was sure that the incidents were isolated.
"No, we've looked all over London and he's nowhere to be found Albus." Moody responded. "Wherever he is, he's beyond our finding."
"Has he died perhaps?" Arthur asked uneasily.
"I could be so lucky." Snape replied sourly.
"Oh! Don't say things like that Arthur! Ginny would be devastated!" Molly cried.
Albus was happy to hear Molly say that, it meant that his plans for the youngest Weasley were still viable in the likely event that the boy was still alive. He hated the fact that in order for Harry to fulfil his role in the grand scheme, he needed a romantic interest. The fact that he had taken to liking the one girl he couldn't easily control was a problem. A very large problem. It was far better for the boy to be interested in one of his puppets. Yes, that's what Ginny was, a puppet with invisible strings.
Dumbledore would be a happy man when Voldemort was dead and he could remove the The Boy Who Lived's head off of his shoulders. Ginny's distress would be rewarding to watch when she hears that neither of them survived the conflict, and then wipe her memory as if it never happened.
He pondered on whether it would be in his best interest to rid himself altogether of Miss Granger's influence over Harry. He decided he would use that punishment when he knew for a fact that the boy was actively disobeying him.
The old man stroked his beard. "I doubt that he is dead, let us keep looking. What news of the Ministry?"
When Harry stirred, he felt something wet on his forehead, but his body felt infinitely better than it had before he fell asleep, though his limbs were stiff from what he was wearing.
"Hey," Said a soft voice. "You're awake. How do you feel?"
"I feel like a mummy" Harry replied.
"I've had to wrap you like one." Hermione replied. "Your clothes were ruined."
"You took off my clothes?" Harry asked, blushing a deep red.
Hermione too went red. "I had to! They were stuck to your skin with blood. I spent half the day looking for healing spells to help." There was a nervous silence. "I tried not to look."
Harry just laughed gently. "Thanks for helping me. Perhaps I'll call us even."
Hermione slapped him gently as she laughed. "Harry!"
He grinned and pushed himself upright.
"You should be able to go to classes again tomorrow." She pulled a few scrolls from her pocket. "I've caught you up on your essays. That will be your excuse for being missing classes. I'm pretty sure I copied your style well enough."
Harry would have been stunned, but he realised that Hermione's focus right now was far from schoolwork. Every time she looked away, Harry could see the sad look in her eyes that told him she was thinking about her parents. "I- Thanks Hermione Then tomorrow I guess we'll go pay a visit to Malfoy."
"You think we should use Draco for this? There are plenty of other Death Eaters in the school, Blaise Zabini seems like a better choice to me."
"If everything goes sour with Voldemort, It would be nice to have him caught in the crossfire."
"Suddenly Draco doesn't sound like a bad idea" She replied with a grin.
Harry started to unwind the bandages from his hand and arms where the scabs had disappeared altogether.
"Reckon we'll come out alive?"
"I don't think for a moment we won't." She replied tartly as she retrieved the clothes she'd grabbed for Harry from behind her. "I'm sorry I made you go through that."
Harry shook his head. "Don't be. I've needed to raise my abilities anyway." He laughed. "To think that he told me love would win the war against Voldemort."
"Dumbledore did?"
Harry nodded. "After the ministry incident, he took me back to his office and gave me the prophecy that Voldemort was after."
Hermione was stunned. "You know it?"
Harry nodded and recited the prophecy which he had committed to memory on that night, to which Hermione listened with intense concentration.
After she had listened to it, Hermione shook her head. "Something doesn't add up there Why would he have told you the prophecy with the intention of obliviating you later anyway?"
"I saw it in his pensive, so I'm pretty sure that it's real."
Hermione seemed less than convinced. "I don't trust anything that comes from that man."
"Just a thought, but perhaps he was hoping to put it in my subconscious I don't really know how obliviate actually works"
Hermione put on her thoughtful face as Harry took his robe from her and put it around him so that he could take off his lower bandages without exposing himself any more than he felt comfortable with. "I don't know"
With all of his clothes put on his body, Harry felt a lot better, more normal.
"So, show me how you went." His girlfriend gestured at the wall they'd been casually drilling into.
Harry let go of his magic and cast reparo with all of his strength, every piece of rubble lying around the room flew together, restoring the wall the same way it had been the day they had come down here.
Hermione blinked a few times, trying to get his aura out of her eyes. "Well I'm impressed. Just remember to at least pretend to leak magic or Dumbledore will know that something is up." She told him sternly. "If you're feeling ok, how about we test our shields against each other?"
Harry entered McGonagall's classroom and felt every eye in the room bore into him.
"You're about a week and a half late for class mister Potter. I hope you have a good excuse." She said through pursed lips.
"I had to take some time off to catch up. I was really behind in my assignments." He replied.
"That's a rather pitiful excuse given that nobody has seen you for practically two weeks without warning that you had gone anywhere."
"Sorry about that"
"Have a seat mister Potter, I'm sure that the Headmaster will have some words for you later today." Harry shrugged and took his seat. To his surprise, Harry was still able to use his wand as long as he kept his mind clear when doing so. It made it all the easier to dutifully paid attention while waiting for the class to end.
Harry stepped outside of the classroom and stepped into one of the lesser used corridors.
"Seems like I lost fifteen galleons," Draco Malfoy's drawl echoed behind him. "I was so sure you'd been eaten in the forest."
"Sorry to disappoint you." Harry replied. "Got a moment Malfoy? I want a word with you in private."
"Like I'd be caught dead talking with you."
"I'd prefer to avoid that as you'd be useless to me dead at this point." Harry replied flippantly, causing wands to be raised at him.
The boy who lived sighed and took out his wand.
Crabb and Goyle fired a couple of prank spells at Harry, which he easily sidestepped, but created a protego to protect himself from Draco's cutting curse.
Harry returned fire, hitting Crabb and Goyle dead on, the former with a spell to shrink the size of his feet, and the latter causing his eyebrows to grow uncontrollably. Within seconds Goyle was essentially blind and Crabb was trying to stand up on less than adequate feet.
Harry scored a petrificus totalis on Draco, and with a wave and tap with his wand, disillusioned them both.
He guided Draco to the classroom that he and Hermione had decided on the night before, mindful that Dumbledore could be disillusioned anywhere.
When they reached their destination, Harry released Draco and Hermione appeared out of thin air next to him, casting a privacy charm on the door.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" Draco screamed.
"We need a favour." Hermione said to him. "We want you to deliver a message to Voldemort."
"I have no contact with the Dark Lord!" Draco spat at them.
"Well then you can pass the message to your father and have him relay it." Harry responded.
"Tell your 'Dark Lord' that both Harry and I want his help."
Draco grinned and after a second broke out laughing.
"You've got to be kidding me! You want his help? He wants you dead Potter and even I wouldn't mind seeing your mudblood friend smeared from one end of England to the other."
Hermione waved her hand nonchalantly. "We want his help to break a couple of people out of Azkaban, and I don't think that he would mind the extra help breaking out some of his own."
Malfoy gaped. "You're shitting me."
"Here's the terms of the meeting. One, we want Voldemort alone, or at the very least, a minimum council, and two, no Snape or other spies. Period. We want to meet him after midnight and before 4am, he can chose the day and the venue."
Draco thought about it. It was a good opportunity for him, handing Potter to the Dark Lord on a platter would mean instant recognition and curry his favour with the Dark Lord. He nodded slowly. "I have a condition of my own for doing this, I want to be there to see him take you both apart."
"Then it's a deal." Harry told him. "One thing Draco, you give no word of this to anybody except him. I trust you are a decent occlumens?"
"You have to be around that blood traitor Headmaster." Draco sneered.
Harry nodded in agreement. "Don't waste our time Draco, we'll be expecting a quick reply, one to each of us."
With that, they both disappeared and released the privacy spells.
Harry managed to avoid the headmaster until dinner time when he especially pulled Harry from his food to discuss his truancy.
He beckoned Harry down to the dungeons and gestured him into a room with Argus Filtch waiting by.
Harry was caught completely off guard when chains shot out from the walls and clamped on his arms and feet stretching him out in mid air.
"Harry, the teachers have been telling me that you spent your time away doing homework, is this true?"
"Yes sir," He replied nervously.
"Where were you that had such strong wards that nobody could find you?"
"I was in one of the rooms, I can't tell you where it is, Fred and George put it under fidelius last year."
A thoughtful look appeared in Dumbledore's face and he mumbled to himself. "I always did wonder why I could never find that room again I thought I'd just lost it."
Harry wondered if for a moment the twins had actually put a room under fidelius. It made him wonder how Filch would have escaped from the room.
Dumbledore drew up a seat and sat in it. "I want to assume for a moment that you're lying to me and that you've been either seeing Miss Granger somehow, plotting behind my back, or doing anything that I would not approve of."
"But I'm not!" Harry insisted.
"Well, I don't know that for a fact Harry, as you won't let me into your head to see that for myself, so we're going to do it my way for a bit." He replied. "Here's the way we shall work tonight. I've allowed Mister Filch special dispensation to use the whip for tonight. You will be whipped Twenty times, and after every whip, you're going to repeat to me that you were doing homework. If, after that I find that you've been lying to me, I will kill Miss Granger."
"What!?" Harry exclaimed. "You bastard! Leave Hermione out of this! I've done as you asked and stayed away from her!"
"Oh please! May I do it?" Filch begged the headmaster. Harry stared at him with abject horror.
The Headmaster flicked his wand at Filch and said to Harry, "Filch always has been one of my most favourite people to work with. He was such a kind and gentle boy, but a few years of making him relive murders he didn't commit, and this is who he has become. He's not even a squib, but he doesn't know that. I daresay Miss Lovegood has a few quirks, I would not have to do much to have her put out the flame of Miss Granger's life with little suspicion on her part."
He flicked his wand again at Filch. "Well, we'll find out soon enough if you're lying to me, won't we?" The old man replied as he gestured for Filch to start.
With the crack of a whip, Harry screamed as a searing pain leapt across his back and simultaneously, he received a blow to his mental shields.
'So that's his plan is it?' Harry thought to himself. 'I will not break for him. I refuse to!'
"Well Harry, do you still say you doing homework?"
"I was doing homework in a classroom." Harry insisted and felt another crack across his back, again he screamed.
"I've missed this." Filch was grinning madly.
Harry braved all twenty whips with gritted teeth and determination, but refused to bow to either Filch or Dumbledore's attacks.
He panted as the chains released him and dropped him on all fours. Harry desperately wanted to release all of his power and shout the most dangerous unforgivable at the man, but the voice of reason in his head, which had taken on the sound of Hermione, told him that without knowing what Dumbledore was capable, it was imperative that he kept his ace up his sleeve.
Dumbledore bowed his head to the fallen boy, took a bottle from his robes and uncorked it and then poured it over Harry's back, causing him severe pain and attacked him one last time, catching Harry completely unaware, Harry just managed to get a hold of his shield before it broke.
"Very well then Harry, you are free to go."
Harry dragged himself up from the floor and started to walk from the room. "What happened to the Dumbledore I knew?" He asked the man as he passed.
"That Dumbledore never existed in reality Harry. This is the unpleasant reality that you are forced to live with. Far better for you to have accepted my obliviations and live without worry. Now remember what I said about lying to me. The next thing you'll loose would be Miss Granger, so if you are lying, I suggest you lessen your ties to her now."
"I haven't spoken to her." Harry said weakly as he walked from the room.
"obliviate."
Harry clenched his fists in anger. He thought not to speak to Hermione that night as he figured Dumbledore might be actively watching him, coupled with the fact that he didn't want Hermione worrying over his back.
He congratulated himself on holding back, but he was dangerously nearing all he could take. If he didn't find a way to constructively use the powers he had on something more than rats and spiders, he would do something he'd regret. The threat on Hermione was below the belt and would not be forgotten, but Harry knew that Dumbledore was in for a surprise if he tried to kill her, especially if he made Filch or Luna to 'do the honours' as he'd probably put it.
He frowned and promised that if Voldemort didn't send a reply to him within the next two days, he would kill one death eater in the school per day until he replied.
Unfortunately, Harry never did get to try out his spells against Crabb or Goyle as Draco replied the next day, slamming into him and slipping a piece of paper into his pocket by sleight of hand. "Watch it you incompetent fool!" He screamed at Harry and stormed off.
He will meet you tonight, I am to take you both via portkey. Meet me at the room you spoke to me in at half past midnight. Do not be late or else.
Harry grinned and silently made the piece of paper combust.
The day did not go fast enough for Harry and he was very careful with placing his charms to give the impression he was still at the school that night.
He arrived at the classroom half an hour early where Hermione was already waiting.
"I had a nice chat with Dumbledore last night." He said as he came in. "Told me that if he found out I was lying to him, he'd kill you, and then had Filch whip me."
"He actually had Filch whip you!?" Hermione couldn't believe she had just heard that. "Oooh! I'll whip him!"
"He can whip me as much as he likes, he can break every finger, but if he dares come after you I would bring this whole castle down with everyone in it."
Hermione scowled.
" So we're really going to do this?" Harry asked her.
"We really are Harry."
Harry ran one hand through her hair. "I love you."
"I love you too, so don't die on me."
Harry nodded. "You too." He brought her lips to hers.
"Oh please!" Malfoy's voice penetrated the room. "That was the last thing I needed to see, but I suppose you're both saying your goodbyes before you walk into this suicide."
"That remains to be seen." Harry replied. "You got the portkey?"
Draco pulled out a live snake out of his robes. "This is it."
Harry moved to put his hand on the snake and it struck at him, missing by a fingernail.
"Behave yourself, or I'll cut off your head." Harry hissed at it.
The snake begrudgingly reached towards him with its mouth closed.
"Let's go Hermione."
"Move it mudblood."
Hermione gripped the snake and they were portkeyed into the same graveyard that Harry had witnessed Voldemort's return in.
Harry and Hermione both assessed the situation immediately. Voldemort was sitting on top of a grave with his arms crossed looking bemused. They could clearly make out two silhouette auras shining behind graves.
"You actually came Potter." Voldemort replied, clapping his hands.
Harry pointed his wand at one grave and blew it up. "I'm here to talk, not for an ambush." He gestured his wand to the grave protecting the other death eater. "You can tell that one to come out too."
Voldemort inclined his head. "Bellatrix, quit hiding like a coward."
Bellatrix rose from her crouch and moved beside Voldemort while Lucius stared at his son from behind them. Harry gripped his wand tight, how he wanted right now to separate every limb from her body for what she did to Sirius.
"So, the young Draco tells me you have an interest in Azkaban, and you want my help to break someone out of it"
Harry nodded. "That's correct,"
"My parents have been framed and put in there."
"And what do I care for a couple of muggles mudblood?" The Dark Lord queried as he stood up and approached them.
"I don't expect you to care for them." She replied tartly. "I'm going to break them out, with your help or without, but I figured that you had a few people there you wouldn't mind having back and it would make my life a lot easier."
"I could make your life a lot easier by taking it from you." The wizard replied. "I'm waiting for you to tell me what I want to hear."
"How about this:" Harry said as he stared into the red eyes of his nemesis. "You help us break out her parents. I help you kill Dumbledore."
Harry had caught his interest at that point. "Well now, that is something a bit more interesting. It sounds to me like the old fool put them away as a punishment to the mudblood did he not? Why suddenly the idea that I can help, am I not your enemy as well."
"He wants me to kill you, be sure of that, but I will not do it. I make my own decisions, and I would rather aide a Dark Lord who kills openly and admits it than a would-be Champion of the Light who controls everyone by taking away their ability to think for themselves and stabs people in their backs."
"That is true enough, the nature of Albus Dumbledore is not a clean slate, far from it. However, you are useless to me boy, you know nothing of use and Bella has told me all about your 'righteous anger'."
"You want righteous Anger!?" Harry yelled at him. "I'll give you anger!"
He pointed his wand and let go as much magic as he could at Bellatrix and screamed out "crucio!" Bellatrix dropped to the floor screaming where she stayed until Hermione put her hand on his shoulder.
"That's enough Harry, you've made your point."
"Oh, have I?" He asked her furiously. "How about I kill her? Would that show any usefulness?"
Voldemort's eyes seemed filled with Mirth as if he had just been given a Christmas present. "She is too useful to allow her killed." He said as he watched her writhe on the ground as she recovered. "Get up Bellatrix! You're pathetic!"
He snapped his fingers. "Lucius, bring in two of my toys. You can prove your usefulness by killing some prominent figures who have failed to show me the respect I deserve." He placed a hand on Hermione's cheek where she gazed at him with death in her eyes. "If you can do that, then we'll see about if you're worthy of my help."
Harry nodded. "Hermione, make sure there's an anti-apparition field around."
She nodded and raised her wand in an arc. "It is done."
A second later, Lucius returned with two half-dead figures, Draco smiled cruelly as Percy Weasley was brought before them together with Igor Karkaroff.
"H-Harry and Hermione! Don't tell me he got you too! Run! Save yourselves!" Percy called to them.
"So I just kill him right?" Harry asked him as he raised his wand.
"Indulge me Potter, I like to see others in pain."
Percy's eyes widened in fear and Karkaroff stood stone-faced as Harry started obliged the sadist.
Percy was no friend of his. What more was he than a puppet of both Fudge, and by at least proxy, Dumbledore? He was in the hands of the death eaters and therefore dead regardless of whether it was Harry or someone else that killed him.
Harry started with the two spells he'd been dying to try on someone live and turned Percy's eyes to acid, and, together with the onion eyelids charm, worked as perfectly as predicted. Harry's once proud heart was stone cold to the screams that echoed through the night. He took his time messing with many of the charms he'd been dying to try, breaking bones, giving him gills to breathe with, and finally, "Accio Percy's heart."
The heart flew into Harry's hands, snapping veins as it shot towards him. Harry caught it with his hands, squeezing it as if he'd just caught the snitch causing whatever blood was left in it to splatter everywhere around him.
Harry narrowed his eyes as Percy's head fell down, dead from shock. He handed the heart to Voldemort.
Hermione's eyes were alight with anger as she imagined that Karkaroff was Dumbledore. Having extracted all of his teeth and burnt holes in his skin until it showed bone, she relished making him suffer and would not let him die easily as she burned off a lot of anger that had been building for months. She hoped that it would feel this satisfactory with the real thing.
She stepped up to him. "Have you had enough?" She asked him. "Do you wish for mercy?" Karkaroff nodded weakly. "I will not." She kicked him in the face. Her kick was less than spectacular, achieving nothing. "Imperio!" she yelled.
"I want you to gouge your eyes out." She stared coldly at him as he did it. "Now, you will put your hand down your throat until you choke to death."
Igor Karkaroff did not fight the imperious, her last command was less than pleasant, and the last thing he knew before he died that there was perhaps a person who was more willing to inflict pain than Bellatrix LeStrange.
Draco stared at the body as Igor finished gagging on his hand, he had seen people tortured to death before, but he could not have for a moment imagined that mudblood Granger, who had an impressive encyclopaedia of legal spells, would ever use the list of spells he had witnessed today.
"Incendio."
Voldemort laughed, not a laugh of malice, but one of utter delight.
"I am impressed." He replied from his headstone where he had chosen to sit for half of the show. "You've entertained me more than I had hoped tonight, so let us negotiate. You wish my help to break into Azkaban, you've got it. But there will be a test I shall give you first."
Hermione looked at him from the heap that was once the headmaster of Durmstrang. "We're listening."
"You will retrieve for me the Sorting Hat from Dumbledore's office. He has also has a set of scales. Destroy it. And lastly, I think I would like those awful lemon drops he serves to poison the next person he offers one to."
"Is that all?" Harry asked. "Timeframe?"
"Three days. Draco will have the portkey by tomorrow night." Voldemort looked at the boy who nodded. "In order to break into Azkaban, you will join me, you will train as assassins, remove a few people I don't like and spy for me. When you are ready, we shall retrieve your parents."
Harry nodded. "Agreed, on a few of my own conditions."
Voldemort gestured for him to continue.
"We won't take the Dark Mark. We--"
"--All of my death eaters have the dark mark, why should I make an exception to either of you?" He asked them.
"At some point in the near future, one of us three, is going to kill Dumbledore, make no mistake about that. If you mark us with the Dark Mark, we immediately loose our edge on any target skilled enough to see the distortion that thing makes on Auras."
Voldemort slowly nodded.
"The Dark Mark is my assurance that I will not be betrayed, what do I do for your loyalty then?"
Harry wasn't sure how to make that kind of promise.
"We'll sign a contract, magically binding." Hermione answered for him. "The conditions of this contract are that we will not break our alliance to you unless you give us due cause to. If you decide you don't want us around, we reserve the right to retaliate."
"If you prove your worth, I shall not have need to remove you."
"Alright then," Harry continued. "We don't wear that death eater garb, you want us to assassinate, we'll leave our own mark that people will learn to fear.
"And lastly, you keep our bargain a secret, if you bring us before Severus Snape or anybody who plays both sides, you ruin our chance at Dumbledore and the deal is off."
Voldemort shook his head. "I will not agree to the last condition, but I will give you warning. If you want to prevent your identity, you can use a glamour. It would not do for me to refer to you then as I do, so what shall I call you both?"
"Baron and Baroness Black." Hermione told him, to which Bellatrix scowled.
Harry nodded in appreciation.
"And I have one more condition to add." Hermione said, looking around. Harry raised an eyebrow. He didn't think he'd left anything out.
"For each time someone calls me 'mudblood', I take a finger." She stared at Draco, who scowled.
Voldemort smiled nastily. "If not for the fact that it would make my death eaters less effective in battle, I would love to watch them find out the hard way. I shall warn them."
They bowed their heads and walked back to Draco.
"Do that test, and we shall have an alliance."
They both looked determined as they grabbed a hold of the snake and portkeyed out of the graveyard.
"When do we get to kill him and that mudblood?" Bellatrix asked him.
"I'm starting to have second thoughts about it, if the boy and the mudblood can prove themselves willing to do as I say, they will be most an interesting pair to watch."
Lucius approached them from his rear spot. "My Lord, I cannot believe you allowed those two blood traitors to set terms!"
"Unlike simpletons like you who joined me for the promise of power, and make no mistake, you will have it; they both have a very specific reason for joining which I find myself wanting to help them. That old skrewt is too strong for me to kill, his duelling skills are unparalleled if he does not restrain himself. Having two children such as them would make my job much easier."
"They'll betray you once their cause is seen to."
"No, they will continue to assassinate the people I tell them to, once the old fool is dead, they shall take the mark, just as the rest of you."
Author's note:
There's another chapter you've digested :) You have my thanks for reading.
I was really surprised at the number of people who have never read Darkfics before and I'm really happy you decided to give my story a go. The truth is that I'm not a fan of Darkfics either :) I prefer fluffy stories, but I've found that writing Darkfics does give you a lot of creative license which is nice to play with.
--Steven