150The once lavish atrium of the Ministry of Magic was derelict. The many fireplaces that lined each wall were quiet, and hadn't been alight in years. The pea-cock blue ceiling no longer spun and winded with golden writing, it was entirely still. Years of dust had built up on the polished, hardwood floor covering dried blood from the carnage that had taken place there. There was only some dim, unnatural light built into the very walls that kept it from pitch darkness. The towering Statue of Magical Brotherhood was chipped and damaged, but still stood as testament to a defunct government.
Shoeprints formed in the dust seemingly from nowhere. The little particles were thrown up into the air as something slid across the ground, but not a sound echoed in the empty halls. Beneath Death's cloak of invisibility, a weary Harry Potter strode slowly through the atrium toward the elevators that would lead him to the rest of the building.
The man beneath the cowl felt little sympathy for the simpering sycophants that once populated those walls. For every Arthur Weasley, Amelia Bones, or Nymphadora Tonks, there'd been half a dozen horrible bastards who forced through ridiculous legislations and hampered the good work of well-meaning citizens at every turn. And all along allowing the sickness that saw Voldemort's first rise to fester and grow. Morons.
He didn't blame the common witch or wizard, and he knew that in the end, they suffered worst for the follies of others. For them, there was still a great deal of sympathy in his heart. But the men and women who allowed magical life to stagnate deserved nothing but contempt.
And it was a man beneath the cowl, gone was the short, specky boy that once walked Hogwarts' halls. The glasses went years before when he realized just how much of a liability they were. Magic can fix nearly anything when put to the purpose. Sometimes it just takes time.
He'd grown to be just shy of six feet, still a far cry from Ron's height but nothing to scoff at. Where once he'd been terribly skinny from years with the Dursley's, there were strong sinews of muscles from years of use and struggle. The most obvious change to the naked eye was the neatly trimmed beard on his jaw.
Despite his best efforts, he still had his father's unruly hair. While thankfully, he still had his mother's striking emerald-green eyes. The last bit of him that was entirely unchanged was the scar on his brow. The lightning bolt was a thin white line that was perfectly visible when the light caught it at the right angle. A constant reminder of the monster that had caused so much strife.
Years later, Harry still wondered just what possessed the madman to wreak such a horrible destruction. What would've happened if he kept himself to Britain and the affairs of wizards? But more than that, he wondered if Tom would've gone through with it if he knew what would come of it. He should've listened to the Hogwarts motto, 'Don't Tickle a Sleeping Dragon'. But he didn't just tickle it he fired a Bombarda right at its fucking head. But he knew better than most, wondering was futile. What's done is done, there is no changing it.
Harry reached the other side of the atrium, stuck in his own musings. The golden gates that once barred entrance to the rest of the Ministry were twisted and gnarled, the metal wrenched open and marred by spell-fire. The splintered remains of the visitors stand laid scattered about the floor, a broken Probibity Probe resting among the wreckage.
Stepping through it all, the wood snapped beneath his feet as he went. The first noise heard in those halls in years echoed impossibly loud. The elevators to the other levels were nowhere to be seen, the long shafts stretching up and down into blackness.
The Elder Wand appeared in his hand with a thought. The centuries old, legendary tool responded to him instinctually. He'd taken it from Dumbledore's tomb when he was just seventeen, after the war started properly. It'd only been thanks to Luna that he understood the significance of it well enough to retrieve it to begin with. He missed the odd girl with her brilliant insights as much as anyone.
It was a long wand, fifteen inches, with a thestral tail-hair for the core. It responded to him better than the holly and phoenix feather wand of his youth. Peverell blood… same lineage ran in Tom's veins just from a different brother. Though it hadn't become fully his until he bested Draco. It still owed its allegiance to him after he disarmed Dumbledore. That's one cowardly little shit I don't miss one bit.
A sphere of light emerged from the tip and dropped down the shaft to the floors beneath. No Latin would pass his lips again, reliance on spells, instead of a true understanding of magic, had been pivotal in the deaths of countless magicals.
Stepping over the precipice, he glided down, light as a feather. He descended the levels, noticing how each floor appeared as though it had been barred. The people they'd been trying to keep out hadn't been deterred, though. Each one was broken, and he could see the trail of dark, old blood stained the floor of each department. His descent didn't stop until he reached the last entrance.
When his feet met solid ground again, he found himself in a familiar corridor. The torches on the walls erupted in blue flames. Ahead of him, in the dark, tiled hallway of the Ministry's lowest level, was the black door to the Department of Mysteries.
There was a faint stench of death as he approached. The decaying corpse of one of the Unspeakables rested forgotten against the wall. Dried blood stained his white robes from half a dozen wounds delivered by a blade.
Fire erupted from his wand and incinerated the corpse. Didn't even do them the courtesy of a proper burial or pyre. There was blood on the dark walls, barely visible in the torch light. Far too much blood for only one body. But why leave just the one?
He opened the black door and was met with the enchanted entrance room. It was meant to disorient. A circular room with a black marble floor that looked like standing water and twelve doors all around. He knew there was a way to ask for an exit, but he had no intention of leaving the way he came.
When he was fifteen, some eight years earlier, he stumbled his way to the Chamber of Death, but not this time. As though drawn to it, he opened a door and revealed the massive rectangular room he was looking for.
It looked older than any other room in the Ministry. Made entirely of stone that stepped ever downward to a raised dais. On that dais sat the Veil. It whispered to him, even from the other side of the room.
But he didn't listen to the whispers because he was not alone. As soon as his foot met the stone, bodies rose from the ground. Shambling corpses, willed toward the single purpose of tearing him apart. Fire erupted hot and consuming from his wand. Of course, why would I have expected anything less from the sanctimonious bastards.
It explained the lack of bodies anywhere near any of the blood he'd seen. They'd brought them all down to the Chamber of Death and defiled them. How long did they cower on every floor of the Ministry, common witches and wizards wanting nothing more than to see their families one more time? Only to have their corpses used as Inferi.
He hadn't been there to see it, but he'd seen the results all over Britain and heard more than his fair share of rumors about what happened elsewhere. But it was worst here, terrible retribution for the atrocities of the few.
Fire surrounded him and pushed ever outward as he stepped closer and closer to the Veil. They did not cry out in pain, but they did bay for his blood as the fires consumed them, burning to ash even as they tried to fight their way through the flames that licked at their rotten flesh. Finally, the scraping, cloying desperation ceased and an eerie quiet settled.
It didn't last though. From behind the dais, sweating and singed emerged what to most would appear to as nothing more than a monk. Harry knew better.
This was one of the Inquisitors, the deadly arm of the church that spearheaded the decimation the magical population across the world. All because Tom went much too far. He was short, and young, no older than him, with a shaven head and mad, bloodshot eyes.
A holy spell was on his lips, and he fired it right at Harry. Even with the cloak, the hint of his face was visible and gave some hint of a target. But he was quick enough to move out of the way.
The light that erupted from the tip of his wand in retaliation was a vile orange, meant not to stun or incapacitate, but to kill. Oh, how disappointed Dumbledore would be if he could see me now. But in the years since the man's death, he'd learned a valuable lesson. Fight to win otherwise you're the one that would end up dead.
The little monk wasn't the seasoned veteran he'd fought and beaten and watched kill a dozen times over. He was green, and afraid. Even with years of conditioning and training, and torment to reinforce it all, he stumbled out of the way of Harry's spell, losing his footing. The shield he threw up to stop the next spell shattered on contact and his arm crippled and crunched from the impact.
Harry felt a vindictive glee as he heard the man cry out in pure agony. But he wasn't satisfied. The blue light that struck his enemy's chest as he writhed wouldn't kill him instantly, it would be over minutes and torturous. Stepping to the edge of the dais, he threw the cowl away from his head and stared down into the face of the holy man, "How unlucky that you got this pitiful assignment."
"Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium…" The monk wrapped his hand around the crucifix at his neck and cast his eyes heavenward.
Incensed, Harry jumped down from the dais and grabbed him by his collar, "Your God cannot save you, and why would he, you are the work of the devil aren't you?"
The saddest thing about the abhorrent arms of the Inquisition was that every one of them was a magical raised from infancy to detest what they were. A practice of the church done with the express purpose of countering the unseen world of magic should they ever step out of line. It was not the first time they'd implemented such measures, but it was the most decisive.
The monk's voice was loud, fanatical in its reverence. He spoke in Italian, but with a bit of magic, Harry understood every word, "I am a child of the devil who works in the light that I might see the gates of heaven and eternal peace."
"Is that what they told you in Rome, when they tortured you for years?" Harry laughed derisively, "You are nothing more than a weapon meant to be discarded and thrown away. They won't mourn you, not one second. You'll die here alone and forgotten."
"I'm never alone so long as I have my God. And I need no praise, heathen." He spat the word like a curse, but it was one that Harry wore gladly, "I will live in his light for all time. You… you will only know the fires." The monk groaned in pain as his magic did its work.
"But not because of you. You failed… quite miserably. There were first years who would have given a better fight I think." Harry snarled, shoving. him into the ground. His head bounced against the hard stone.
"It is only as God wills. He, and he alone, will determine when it is your time to meet the flames."
"I've seen no evidence of your God. So, you'll understand if I don't fear the fire."
"And yet he is there all the same." The monks groaned in pain as the magic tearing apart his body from the inside did its work.
"I speak only to the old gods of the earth and sky, and all other manner of domain, and I hear their weakened whispers every day." It was their whispers that brought me here.
It was the truth, a practice that he took to in the years of terror that followed the rise of the Inquisition. The Christian god certainly had nothing but disdain for his ilk according to the priests and monks, so he sought refuge in the older gods.
"The whispers of the devil… nothing more." The monk believed every word with a zealotry that could see otherwise good men do terrible things.
"Perhaps… I'll only know for sure when I'm dead." Harry turned away from the dying man, but something brought him up short. Looking back, he asked, "You know of Tom Riddle? The Dark Lord Voldemort?"
"The monster," he spat, and a bit of blood dribbled out of his mouth. His body was breaking down quickly, his organs starting to fail, "Will suffer for eternity."
"If there's one person who deserves the fires you wish so fervently on your own kind, it's him." Harry despised the church for everything they'd done, and even fought alongside blood purists against them, but there was still no one he reviled more than Tom, "He still can't die, I take it?"
He never found the last of the Horcruxes, too often hunted and harried to manage the feat. And when every muggle across the country is wary of even a hint of magic, it makes it incredibly difficult to search in the first place.
Millions of muggles turned to their religion for fear of what they didn't understand. Whether it was Catholicism, the Orthodoxy, the Protestants or Islam, each offered a salve to the fear and answers in lieu of truth. Every service in every holy place across the world had been filled to bursting in the years since Tom's folly.
"He remains at the Vatican," The monk gave him a bloody smile, "tormented and tortured daily for all to see. A testament to the His Glory and the successes of the Inquisition. And someday his soul will be dispatched to the deepest circles of Hell."
"Good, thank the gods for small mercies."
"God."
Harry rolled his eyes and spoke plainly, "You should make your peace, monk. It won't be long now." With that, he left the monk to die and stepped back up onto the dais. He could hear muttered Latin as the young man returned to his prayers.
Staring into the Veil, Harry spun the ring on his finger around idly. He'd inlaid the Stone into it, silver instead of the gold that'd been before. It was a simple band inlaid with the black stone bearing the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.
It was the last of the Hallows that came to him, taking him years to finally work out Dumbledore's meaning. More for a lack of trying than anything. Tom wasn't his focus for many of those years and so that old snitch lay forgotten among his possessions. He'd never used it, afraid to suffer the judgement of the dead. But more than that, he didn't want to see the faces of those who died for him… or with him… or despite his best efforts to save them. Not while he still walked the realms of the living.
He could not explain his hesitation on the dais. Now that the moment arrived, he didn't know if he could actually do it. Just as his first time in the room, he felt as though something, or someone, was looking at him from the other side.
There was something unsettling about taking a step into the unknown. But then what is left here. Life in exile or fighting futilely until death. There were rumors of some small conclaves. Survivors in the remote parts of the world, tucked away in hills and mountains, and places that would otherwise be inaccessible or unlivable. And even then, they would be hunted until their dying days. My friends are either dead or captured… or worst of all turned traitor.
What is the worst that could happen? Just a few steps and it'll be done. No more wondering. There was that whisper in his mind. They weren't his own thoughts and it'd been urging him now for what seemed like weeks to take this step. The last time he'd heard voices there'd been a sixty-foot basilisk in the walls of Hogwarts, so there was a part of him that wondered if this was madness born of solitude and loss, but he couldn't say for sure. All he knew for sure was that it sounded feminine and distant. Maybe it's Death looking to take back her gifts.
Whatever the case, the voice was right. All it would take was a few steps and he would have his answers. And I've seen first hand that there are worse things than death. It was something that Dumbledore understood years before and that Tom learned that lesson the hard way. He was reminded of it far away at the center of Christendom every day.
Harry took a deep, steadying breath and willed his legs to work. He strode unsteadily toward the high arch of the Veil. As he stepped through, the monk took one last shuddering breath and the room fell into peaceful, permanent silence. For no soul that ever passed through the Veil returned.
I hope everyone enjoyed. This story has been bouncing about my mind for awhile now.
If you're a fan of my other work 'The Benefits of Saving Veela', this is going to be a different story. That is more of Porn w/Plot where this is Plot w/Porn. There will be lemons eventually, but it'll take more time to develop in this story. Just so everyone knows, this will be updated monthly here.
All completed chapters of this, along with plenty of other stories, are available over on my p atreon.
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Thanks for reading!