181Summary:
Ron and Hermione died due to the events at Malfoy Manor and Harry was on track to join them. Alone and beaten, Harry resorts to the most horrendous magic to try and save his own life and continue the hunt for Voldemort's Horcruxi. An act that would start him on the path to becoming a monster so much greater and more terrible than the one he had set out to destroy.
Prologue:
"I fear you have made a grave mistake, Bella." Voldemort said as he kneeled down to examine the dead Mudblood on the floor.
The withering curse, one he himself had enchanted her knife with, had already begun to fade from her corpse, seeping back into the letters carved onto her forearm. The curse left the body upon death, leaving it as pristine as it had been in life. And there before him was Hermione Granger, eyes open and unseeing.
"I do not understand, my lord. I have taken from him his two greatest allies. And now he is on death's door too." She said.
"Two?" Voldemort asked, looking up.
"The Weasley boy. I got him near the heart with the knife. He will be dead within minutes, hours if he has help. Potter only got nicked in the arm, so he merely has a week. Two at most." Bella explained.
"Then we shall be on high alert for three weeks. Send out the message!" Voldemort dictated aloud to the room of his most trusted Death Eaters, whom he had summoned there. "Lock down all government facilities, and Hogwarts. All patrols at all locations are now to be done in pairs... No. Triplicates! Three persons on each team. All family members of Death Eaters or Snatchers and their homes are to be guarded."
Macnair bowed and advanced on the fireplace. He vanished a moment later with a fistful of ash and a pronouncement of "Ministry of Magic, Minister of Magic's office." Goyle senior did the same a moment later to Hogwarts and his Mrs did the same for Saint Mungos. The three most likely locations of an attack by the dying boy.
"But My Lord, I don't understand." Bellatrix confessed. "He is a child and not even a gifted one at that. And now his last two sources of support are gone. He is alone and dying."
"You are right Bellatrix." Voldemort told her with an edge to his voice. "You DON'T understand. You have taken from that boy what may be the last two people tethering him to the mortal world. He is an injured and solitary animal on the brink of death with nothing to guide him. Do you have any idea what righteous men with their backs against the wall facing insurmountable odds are capable of? Have you ever seen what the young, stupid and weak are capable of when they have nothing left to lose?"
Bellatrix bit her lip and looked down at the bloodied floor of Malfoy manner and merely shook her head.
"I have." Voldemort told her, just above a whisper. "And it is a terrible thing to behold. Otherwise good men, when storming Majdanek, filleted the German Socialists stationed there alive upon witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust. I would know, I was there. I have yet to so thoroughly enjoy torture or killing since. There are no tactics off limits to the boy now, no magic he will not use, no targets he will refuse to attack out of principle. You didn't take away his greatest tactical support, you took away his moral and emotional support. He was a puppet tangled in the strings of Dumbledore's pitiful moralities, and now you have cut those strings."
Chapter 1:
The Death of Harry Potter
Harry stirred from his fitful sleep with a lurch. He couldn't recall dozing off but considering the lack of rest he'd gotten over the past week it was unsurprising that he passed out. Unsurprising, but alarming.
He flung the chair he'd slept in aside and scrambled to the other end of the tent and the unconscious man lying there. A few swishes of his wand later and he breathed a sigh of relief. His diagnostic charm showed that the dose of sleeping draught he'd given the Death Eater was still working. If it had run through Draco's system while Harry'd been unconscious, then it could have spelled disaster. Still, he hadn't survived this long without an unhealthy amount of paranoia.
He retrieved the Draught of Living Death from his nightstand. It looked to be at the same level as the last time he'd dosed Malfoy. Even still, the possibility that Draco could have woken up, sent out a message for help, only to then dose himself again was just crazy enough to match the daily absurdity that was Harry's life.
He dropped a basil leaf into the glass container, and it dissolved just as it should have. It had not been diluted or tampered with.
Breathing a sigh of relief he sank against the tent wall. A month earlier he would have called himself paranoid. A month earlier he would have been wrong. Checking his watch, Harry discovered that he had slept for six hours. Another ten minutes and Draco really would have woken up. As it stood, he had enough time to pour another dose down his prisoner's throat.
Harry opened the glass container and measured the right amount into a plastic cup he pilfered from a cough syrup bottle. Turns out chemical resistant plastic makes for a great potion container. It was even better at the task than enchanted glass.
He lifted Malfoy's head with far more care and gentleness than the bastard deserved and nearly tipped the container of black sludge into his mouth. It was then that he caught sight of his hand. It was a sight that gave him pause.
He once thought Dumbledore's mortal injury was revolting, yet here he was with a more wretched version of the withering curse devouring his own limb. Whatever Bellatrix had slashed him with as he made his escape from Malfoy Manor was a very different breed of dark magic to that of the ring Horcrux. His flesh had turned black like tar with an ashen sheen. It felt almost mummified in its hardness. In fact, the resemblance to tar was so great that Harry suspected the curse was somehow based on the substance.
There must be some irony in the fact that he was afflicted in the same limb as the late headmaster. Unlike his former mentor, unfortunately, he didn't have a potions master and Death Eater on hand to slow his affliction. Fleur and Bill had done what little they could, but they couldn't save Ron from the withering curse on his chest so Harry doubted they could save him from his own.
That's why he was here in this tent, hidden away from the world. He couldn't bear to remain at Shell Cottage, forcing them to watch him die just as they had seen their brother, in blood and marriage, slowly leave this world. The same way he and Ron had watched Hermione die.
A sudden spasm of pain erupted in his arm and he dropped the dose of sleeping draught. He let Draco back down on Ron's old cot before clutching the agonized limb and clenching his teeth against the pain to avoid biting his tongue. A moment of well-practiced breathing techniques later and he was able to move again. He retrieved the plastic cup and potion bottle and made to refill it before stopping. He reconsidered.
It had been over a week. An entire week and change of research and vainly hoping for an alternative method. It had been a fool's errand, and now he was out of time. In another day the curse would reach a vital organ and kill him. Nobody would be left to continue his mission. Nobody would even know about Voldemort's single vulnerability. Nobody would be left to fulfill the prophecy. He was the only one who could do it. The only person or thing capable of accomplishing either. And instead of spending the week he had left trying to find a way to break into Gringotts he had wasted it trying to save Malfoy's life.
It was time.
Harry discarded the potion and returned to his work desk. The piles of arithmancy, discarded plans of bank heists and snake assassinations now only useful as a means of kindling. The wretched tome leaning against the pin board was what he needed now.
Secrets of the Darkest Arts.
In its pages was the only means of saving his life, and the only means of maybe getting his friends back by his side. Friends without whom he had no chance of completing his mission, but with whom he could conquer the world. With them by his side he could defeat any foe. With their presence, even in spirit, he could overcome any obstacle.
He untied the golden Snitch from where he'd placed it on the pin board. His map of Horcruxes was all the uglier without it. He had the diary pinned beside Slytherin's ruined locket. Next to that was a drawing of Hufflepuff's goblet. On the other side was a sheet of paper with Ravenclaw's symbol surrounded by question marks. At the bottom of the board was an impressive drawing of Nagini. There was also the piece of paper where he'd tied the Snitch to and which showed another drawing, this time of the Gaunt ring with the Hollows symbol beside it, which was also surrounded by question marks.
Harry had one Hollow in his possession, and now Voldemort did too.
He was ninety nine percent sure Dumbledore had hidden the Gaunt ring inside of the Snitch, and a further ninety five percent certain it was the Resurrection Stone of legend. Regardless, he was one hundred percent certain that he would be invincible with it in his hands, for with it he could bring back his brain and his heart, Hermione and Ron.
He felt a sudden camaraderie with the late Professor Quirrel. That which he desired most was so close at hand he could taste it, yet so far out of reach. Within the snitch was a stone that could defy death. But how to get it?
He had tried everything. Cutting it open with Godrick's sword, blowing it apart with his strongest spells. He even muttered the name of every candy in existence. Nothing worked.
Now he had one recourse. A means of prolonging his life and maybe circumventing the protections placed on the Snitch.
Draco stirred in his sleep as the potion wore off. The heavy chains Harry had put him in on the first day clinked with every movement. No more procrastination.
With a wave of his wand Harry cast a silencing charm on the tent. It was set to activate on the word "vole" to prevent Draco from saying the tabooed name. It would silence him before he could utter the second syllable of the one word that would lead to his rescue.
Harry wished he'd had the idea sooner. It would have saved his friends lives. It would have saved Draco's life. It would have saved Harry's soul.
He dragged the cot, with Draco in it, to the center of the tent before banishing all of the furniture, clothes, books and spare parchment to make room for the ritual. He burned the runes and ritual lines into the floor with an accuracy honed through his practice of drawing them by hand.
An Ouroboros now decorated the floor, creating a circle with Draco at its center.
"Ohhh. Wha?" Draco moaned groggily
He was waking. Good. The victim needed to be conscious. The killer had to look them in the eyes as they did the deed. Or so said the book. Harry was consulting it now, making sure he did everything exactly.
"Potter? What is this!?" Draco demanded.
Harry ignored the blonde ponce. If they talked, he could lose his nerve. Lose his conviction.
He placed the Snitch on the appropriate spot in the ritual circle, right on the tip of the tale about to be eaten by the serpent. He then withdrew the silver potion knife from his robes. A quick slash of his good hand and the golden sphere was painted red.
"Potter?" Draco said.
He sounded scared now. Good. He had some sense in him after all.
Harry cast the last few enchantments on the Snitch. They were all rather simple charms Flitwick taught in school, unbreakable charms and the like. They were normally easy to remove from an object but through this ritual would become infused into the essence of the object.
"Potter, whatever you think this ritual is supposed to do, it won't work how you expect. They never do." Draco warned, still struggling against his chains.
He was pleading now. In any other situation he would have been correct, but even the son of a Death Eater turned Death Eater himself wouldn't know exactly what this ritual was for.
"Harry please! Only madmen resort to these kinds of rituals. Even the darkest of families forbid them. Stop this!" Draco pleaded further.
Harry removed his robes and shirt while Draco spoke, and he could hear the man's breath catch at the end of his plea. The damage wrought by the withering curse was on full display. It was enough to silence anyone.
Harry couldn't help but chuckle. His entire right arm was like burnt leather, as was most of the right side of his torso down to the hip. He'd have been silenced by the sight too.
There were three steps left to start the ritual, and he couldn't stall any longer. He'd have a minuscule window of time to complete the final task without dying from it. It was a straightforward ritual, one that was easy enough for most people to do if they had a high enough pain tolerance and low enough disgust reflex. But he had decided to take an extra precaution all the same.
He dug the empty vial of Felix Filicus from a drawer and filled it with water from a goblet. Hopefully whatever residue from the potion left in there would give him a few moments, hell, a few seconds of luck.
"You're really going to kill me, aren't you?" Draco finally asked.
This time Harry did acknowledge him. He looked Draco dead in the eyes, ignored the misery and terror in his face and gave a sharp nod.
"But why? I tried to help you. Really, I did." He pleaded. "I don't deserve this."
"I know." Said Harry, just above a whisper.
It was all he could say. He didn't have time to explain now. It was so unfair that it had to be him. Harry had spared monsters like Fenrir Greyback. He had treated rapists and murderers like Rowl and Dolohov with mercy, with kiddy gloves. Well, no more! If everything went according to plan, he could explain everything to Draco after he killed him. Could even thank him for trying to save their lives at the mansion. Could apologize and promise to give those genuinely deserving of this fate a far stickier end.
Harry stepped forward and wiped Draco's face with his cut hand, smearing him with blood. Draco grimaced and shuddered at the contact but returned to the staring match with Harry afterwards.
Two steps to go.
"Take him down." Draco demanded, his fear turning to rage. "You kill that son of bitch and destroy all the wretched perversions of my culture he's propped up. And you do it in my name!"
There was a conviction in his voice. He was ready to die, ready to give his life to take down the man that had humiliated his family and destroyed their dreams.
At least he wasn't wasting Harry's time with offers of fealty or suggesting they team up. With that mark on his arm Voldemort was able to enter is mind and recall him, so long as he was conscious. That's why Harry had kept him sedated. And that's why he was hurrying. If Voldemort coincidentally decided to summon Draco now, then he would be able to sense their location and bring an entire army to the front flap of his tent.
Harry nodded his assent and downed the vial of water.
Draco held his gaze all the way up until the killing curse struck him in the chest. As soon as it did Harry performed the final step.
He put his pinky into his mouth, holding it tightly by the tip with his teeth. Then, using the silver knife once more, he cut it off. It took some fennagling with his tonge to get it to go down his throat and he nearly choked on it when he did, but eventually it went down the hatch.
Somewhere along the way he had started screaming, more in horror at his own actions than pain. As tears ran unchecked down his cheeks the tent around him turned into a chaotic typhoon of magic, a typhoon that flung everything around him every which way. But he wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, and didn't let the storm of clothes and shattered furniture distract him.
He came close to vomiting in disgust as he committed the horrendous act of self-cannibalization, the final act needed to create a Horcrux.
The world around him melted away and he saw it. He saw himself; everything he was, like a collage of memories, emotions, dreams and so many other little things that defined him but did not have names. He watched on, detached, as if by astral projection, as the ritual shredded his essence. Each memory, emotion and less easily named thing that made up his being torn apart like paper and being set aflame.
He heard screaming. So much screaming. His body flailed about as he floated there in the air in a magic and pain induced seizure, as if a puppet whose strings were all being yanked in opposite directions.
It was horrible. A pain so much deeper and so much more profound than any injury or curse he'd yet endured. A pain not of the body and so lacked description.
The rip in his soul grew like a coat zipper coming undone as the burning memories all shifted and left him. When his soul finally split completely in twain, he saw the burning half vanish from his perception and he knew only darkness.
Harry awoke in agony, stirred by the singing of birds outside and the early morning sunlight.
He tried to groan. Tried to move any part of himself, but he didn't have the strength. The world seemed dead. He felt dead. No, that wasn't quite true. He didn't feel dead. In fact, he couldn't feel... Anything. His body was in pain, certainly, but it seemed so far away. Dissociated, maybe. Like it wasn't his body anymore. It took all of his effort to move a finger, and even the sensation of moving, of feeling the carpet beneath his skin, seemed so foreign to him. Like his body was rejecting him.
He watched and listened as he came to grips with his surroundings. The tent looked like a tornado had torn through it, and technically speaking, one kind of had. But his eyes and ears weren't seeking clothes or furniture or even the corpse of his victim. It sought the speck of gold that should have been sitting not three feet from him.
But the Snitch wasn't there.
He turned his head, willing the muscles in his neck to obey. He would have panicked, but his inability to feel seemed to extend to the emotional as well as physical.
Then he heard it. The fluttering sound that he'd become so familiar with in his career as a seeker. The Snitch was flitting about the ceiling like it normally would, but he could tell something was off. It wasn't flying with the short jerking movements it normally used but was slowly and methodically exploring its surroundings.
"Hello?" Harry called, his throat dry and voice hoarse. "Me?"
It was an odd experience. Talking to an inanimate object was nothing new but calling said object "Me" was grammatically strange in the extreme. Still, the Snitch must have heard him because it swooped down and floated above his chest.
It took all of his strength and willpower, but he forced his body into a sitting position. His formerly good hand objected to being use to prop him up, and he could feel every heartbeat.
When he next looked at the snitch it was to find writing on the surface.
'Hello to Me too.' It said.
The words emblazoned on the Snitch, written not in the beautiful and well-practiced calligraphy of Dumbledore but his own chicken scratch, was a confirmation. Proof that it had worked.
Harry Potter had created a Horcrux. Harry Potter was immortal.
It wouldn't stop the withering curse from consuming his body, but he'd be able to go on despite it. He would go on functioning and acting in his own fossilized body for as long as he had to. Until his work was done.
Reality finally started to creep back into him, and he was able to feel a small sliver of hope invade whatever remained of his soul. It was time to find out if the other intended consequence of the ritual had born fruit.
He held out his mutilated hand and the other him in the Snitch obliged. Spreading open like a paper fortune teller it vomited a cracked black stone into his equally cracked and blackened palm.
He turned it thrice in his hand and when he finally dared to look up from the deathly hallow his heart soared and subsequently crashed.
Everyone had come. His mother stood beside his father who stood beside his grandparents. Ron and Hermione stood beside Draco. Sirius was there beside Peter. Albus, Moody, Cedric. Every person he cared for had come, and every single one of them wore a look of abject horror.
So, they knew what he'd done. He should probably have felt ashamed or else shared in their disgust and horror. But he couldn't. To feel any remorse would undo the Horcrux and make him whole, killing him.
He rose to his feet.
"Come." He demanded of them all. "We have work to do."
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On Creating Horcruxes:
First of all, I know the plural is horcruxes, but I am making a reference to another fanfic called "Someone to Love" by the Ferryman. In which Voldemort refers to them as such and Harry makes the same complaints, but seeing as he was the first person to make multiple he called dibs on naming the plural form. I choose to accept his argument and think the idea of Dumbledore, Harry and co referring to them incorrectly as unintentionally disrespectful.
For those of you who don't know, creating a Horcrux requires murdering someone to split your soul and an unspecified horrific act to separate the torn piece. Rowling refuses to say what that act is but we know she told her editor and he nearly threw up from it. Us fans have narrowed it down to three possibilities.
- Murdering an unborn fetus while still in the mother(This theory has a lot behind it. I like this one, but didn't have a pregnant character handy.)
Self-mutilation. See also, the graveyard ritual and entrance to the cave in book six.
- Necrophilia and or cannibalization. No.
- Self-Cannibalization.
I decided on self-cannibalization because it most symbolically reflects the act of creating a Horcrux. Splitting your body into pieces to sustain yourself. Just as the Horcrux does with the soul. Also, just look at Voldemort. The missing nose and ears? Guarantee you he ate those for horcrux rituals. Probably missing both testicles and his dick too, which is just one more reason why cursed child never happened.