Blood-Soaked Succession 19 : Quick Studies (Patreon)

Chapter 19:

Quick Studies

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Daphne, Susan, Lavender and Padma followed him down the winding halls away from the room of requirement in complete silence.

Harry, having already watched the roots of patrols, walked with a confidence he was sure worried them but he would not elaborate on. Best to seem mysterious in that way, or so Albus and Gellert insisted. He had already canceled their shades as surreptitiously as he could manage and it was barely a minute later that they reached the grand staircase.

"Which classroom are they using?" Harry asked, despite having already spotted the sleeping forms of the Carrows on the map before this little adventure began.

"Same defense class as always, in the astronomy tower." Padma told him.

Harry nodded and they proceeded to the grand staircase to place a hand on the railing.

"Hogwarts." Harry said aloud. "Would you please guide us to the third floor?"

As it had earlier, each of the many moving staircases forming the most direct path to their destination. As it did, he caressed the railing affectionately.

"You can do that?!" Daphne asked in understandable surprise.

"Of course!" Harry said. "Didn't Dumbledore ever tell you? Help, at Hogwarts, will always be given to those who ask for. All you have to do is ask nicely."

Tough lesson to only learn on your last day of school. A lot of missed opportunity for the new alumni's now that they know all the things they could have done while attending. Missed opportunities keep men up at night far more than mistakes or embarrassments. And time wasted with the moving staircases had been so easily averted the whole time.

They descended the staircase.

Harry kept his gaze forward, unafraid of prefects or Auror patrols. Hogwarts was on their side, so they had nothing to fear. It didn't stop Lavender and Susan from noticeably fretting. He would almost call it fidgeting, but he ignored it either way. The trip down to the third floor was a short one and they turned to see one such patrol facing away from them. A pair of Aurors, galed in red robes and checking the usual confessionary-like cupboards.

"Percusio. Petrificus Frigalis." Harry intoned the two spells boredly.

He nailed the Auror on the left at the base of his skull with that piercing curse, killing him instantly. The second froze in place, literally, when hit with the stream of the icy variant of the petrificas totalis. The spell itself wasn't considered dark, as it was meant for restraining salamanders, ashwinders and other fiery creatures. It wasn't even necessarily deadly to a human being so long as somebody was around to cast the countercurse within moments. And with this section of the third floor being portrait free, nobody would come upon them within at least an hour or so, so Harry considered him good as dead, but threw a weak cutting charm at his back anyways. If the cold didn't kill him, the deep gash would have him bleed out. He had a minute or more to live.

He heard all four of his shadows stop dead in their tracks at the sight of his two killings. He stopped too. But didn't turn around.

"I forget that you have all been so insulated from the horrors of war while in here." He said. "Or were you expecting us to just have a pleasant cup of tea with Alecto and Amycus?"

He turned to look at them to see their expressions and felt pity for them.

"Well, welcome to war. It gets uglier. I promise." Harry told them.

'Are you... going to kill them?" Susan asked.

"No." Harry said. "You are. And if you have a problem with that, you can join Voldemort. I won't stop you. But I will kill you the next time we meet."

He knew they believed him, and so he turned around and marched on towards their destination.

All four of them followed in his wake.

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Using silencing charms the quintet easily broke into the defense classroom and the staff bedroom beyond. The Carrows, whom Harry was pretty sure were siblings, were sound asleep in each-other's arms. the five of them cast simultaneous stunners to ensure they would remain that way until harry deemed otherwise.

"Put them in chairs. Tye them up, tightly, and gag them." Harry instructed. "Then put them at opposite sides of the room, facing each other."

While the four of them did that Harry went to the office desk on the other side of the room and rifled through the drawers. Finding the correct quill and stamp for changing student grades he setup the inkwells. He turned on the small lamp and placed all of the report cards along the desk before turning around to survey the work of his soldiers.

They had done exactly as he instructed, and flanked both of their prisoners on either side. Daphne and Padma stood on either side of Amycus with Susan and Lavender flanking Alecto. He circled around the room, first going being AMycus to check his bindings and gag then, finding them satisfactory, did the same for Alecto. With that done he motioned the four of them to flank the door and turned his wand on the two incestuous instructors.

"Ennervate. Ennervate." Harry intoned twice.

He waited a few moments for them to come complete to and catch their bearings. He identified the exact moment they recognized him and understood their situation by the notable panic in their eyes. Good.

"Good evening Professors. Alecto, Amycus. My name is Harry Potter. Surely you know of me?" They nodded. "Good. I am here to discuss with you my students grades."

He circled aroudn the room as he let his words sink in.

"During my two years teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, they have been spectacular students. Learning the Patronus in their fifth year and, in some cases, fourth or even third year." Harry explained. "So imagine my shock when I return to find that most of them earned a Troll score in your class. I find this unacceptable."

He pulled from his breast pocket four report cards, belonging to the four young ladies in the room with them.

"Now, I would like to discuss how they might earn a higher grade through extra credit. Or at least these four. I have no use for soldiers who flunk out of defense class." Harry said. "The big sticking point, according to these, is that they can't cast the cruciatus curse. Is this correct? Just nod."

They nodded with much exuberance.

"Good. In that case, ladies, if you would be so kind as to demonstrate the cruciatus curse on these two. As they taught it to you. So as I may judge your skill with it and see if I agree with their grading." Harry instructed.

The four marched forward with just a bit too much glee, but he guessed that wasn't such a bad thing. As before Daphne and Padma turned on AMycus with Susan and Lavender on Alecto.

The two bound Death Eaters screamed into their gags as the four cast the torture curse, but it barely lasted a second and it was done. Surefire sign of a failed casting, just like when he'd used the curse on Bellatrix in the Ministry Atrium what felt like a decade ago. Still, best to get a second and third opinion.

"There. Would you two say that was worth an outstanding?" Harry asked the prisoners.

Once again, they nodded passionately. their words of desperate agreement muffled into gibberish through their gags.

"Hmmm. I'm not convinced." Harry said, turning on the girls. "Cast it on me."

"What?!" Lavender demanded as she and Susan backed away from him.

Padma's jaw dropped ever so slightly before she regained her composure and closed it while Daphne raised both eyebrows in surprise at the request.

"I have no use for soldiers who flunked defense, I have even less use for soldiers who question my orders while on a mission, let alone in front of Death Eaters." Harry warned. "If you are to question my decisions, do them in private after the job is done, or cut me down and go turncoat if you find them so intolerable. Now, I instructed you to cast the cruciatus on me."

Harry turned to Daphne and motioned for her to do so. She did not hesitate again.

"Crucio!" She hissed, teeth bared.

And suddenly, Harry was wrapped head to toe in rose bushes. The thorned brambles twisting and wrapping around him like tightly could snakes, tight enough for the thorns to scrape his bones. It was over as soon as it started, a failed casting if Harry had ever felt one.

"You have a delicate disposition, miss Geengrass. That was lovely, but weak." Harry told her.

Padma's jaw was once again dropped.

"You didn't even scream?" She said.

"When you have suffered under the cruciatus of masters like Voldemort, that pathetic casting just does not impress. I'm beginning to agree with Mister and Misses Carrow." He said, turning his eyes on Padma. "Your turn."

She hesitated again, but at his own raised eyebrow she gritted those teeth, stiffened her upper lip and pointed her wand at his chest.

"Crucio!" She practically screamed as she tried to force the spell.

Strands of sticky spider web sliced him open like monomolecular blades, each getting caught on the severed skin, fat, flesh, tendons and bones as they cubed him like a vegetable slicer. It too didn't last very long. Another failed casting.

"Hmm. That was... different." Harry commented, turning on Susan and Lavender. "Well? I'm waiting."

They cast in tandem. Clouds of noxious acid covered his body and filled his lungs, burning every square millimeter of his nostrils and esophagus on its way down. Simultaneously he found himself at the bottom of the ocean, the crushing weight of the many kilotons of salt water above him crushing him from the inside out as the pressure behind every single sinus exploded outward and he was flattened into a pancake.

"Fascinating. Truly, fascinating." He hummed.

He was beginning to think you could learn a lot about a person based on the form of their cruciatus, and felt he'd just seen a new side to these girls. A personal side, like seeing their patronus or boggart take form. Noticing that his students were obviously confused at his reaction to being tortured, he began his lecture.

"I'm sure you all recall our first lesson with Barty Crouch Junior as he masqueraded as Alastor Moody." He began. "In that first lesson he shared the secret to casting an unforgiveable. He told us that we could all point our wands at him and cast the killing curse, but the worst he would suffer for it was a bloody nose. He wasn't exaggerating. You cannot simply point your wand and say the words."

Harry walked over to where Amycus sat, bound and gagged. He grabbed a fistful of the man's hair and looked up to the girls for dramatic effect.

"You have to MEAN it." He practically purred and felt a distinct satisfaction when all four of them shivered at his words. "You have to want them to suffer and, more importantly, truly believe they deserve to be tortured. Which is a difficult frame of mind for even the truly cruel to get into. For the longest time it boggled my imagination how anybody could cast it on somebody they didn't personally know, let alone were innocent. But I think I've figured out how people like Bellatrix do it. With a heavy dose of imagination."

They all blinked at his explanation.

"I want to walk you through a hypothetical scenario." Harry elaborated. "I want you to imagine you had a man, sat in front of you, tied and bound. A man who was part of a terrorist group that openly murdered, tortured and raped. Who personally knew the individuals who assassinated your own aunt and whom you had yourself been compelled by to torture or maim your friends and beloved siblings."

One by one their faces darkened as they understood. Susan, reminded of her aunts' assassination, surely as fresh a horror in her mind as it was two years hence. Lavender at what she had been made to do to Parvati, and Padma and Daphne for their siters. They got it. He knew, in their heart of hearts, that they understood him completely.

"Were we so lucky as to have such a despicable wretch at our mercy, we could easily cast the cruciatus at him without having to use our imagination." Harry went on, now tongue in cheek, as he pressed his wand to the side of Amycus' neck. "But I will have to make do with holding this scenario in my mind as I simply utter the word, CRUCIO!"

Amycus reacted instantly and in far greater degree than he had to even two of the girls at once.

Every vein on his neck came to the surface and his eyes bulged as he screamed into his gag. The ropes binding him and the chair both creaked as his struggled against them with all his might. Within mere seconds his skin turned red from the exertion and he was beginning to twitch.

"Now there are several myths about the cruciatus I would like to dispel." Harry lectured on as Amycus suffered his crucaitus. "The first is that it jumps between people by touch. As you can see, I am grasping him by the head and am not being affected. It is not an electric current. The second is that the curse will drive a person insane if held under it too long. This is a partial myth. It can do that, but you are more likely to simply die from the curse if held under it too long. Usually from biting off and choking on your own tongue or injuring yourself from the resulting seizure. With him bound and gagged, neither of those are issues."

By now Amycus was bashing his head in every direction he could manage, and his eyes took on a lifeless, colorless look. He was even beginning to foamat the mouth through his gag a bit.

"So, now it's a question of what will give out first. His heart? Or his brain? Will he have a heart attack from the exertion, or an aneurism? Of course, there's always a stroke. Which is what usually results in the lifeless, mindless state of crcuiatus victims in as much as the trauma from the curse is." Harry went on.

They only had to wait a few more moments after that before they knew he was gone. It was a sudden stop to his seizing and screaming. He simply fell limp, lifeless, despite the curse still being active. And when the room filled with the odor of his vacated bowels Harry removed his wand from the corpse's neck, ending the curse.

"As you can clearly see, he is dead." Harry said matter-of-factly.

He grasped the chair he was bound to at the top and bodily hurled him against the back wall where the former shattered and the latter crunched, falling limply to the ground as splintered wood rained on top of him. All five of his watchers jumped at the sudden display of violence and anger from Harry, but Daphne regained her composure first.

"Now, if you ladies would be so kind as to likewise dispose of THIS trash." Harry said, motioned with a polite wave at Alecto's bound form.

By now the woman was half screaming and half crying into her gag in a rather pitiable display, but there was no mercy or pity on the faces of the four girls. They marched forward dutifully, forming a half circle around the pleading woman and paid no mind to the deep tear tracks on her face.

"All you must do is keep firmly in your mind the monster she is, point your wand and say that magic little word." Harry instructed.

"Crucio." They all said at once, barely letting him finish his instruction.

Based on their results, Harry'd say they more than deserved the Outstanding score he was now putting on the report cards from the stamp on the grading desk. They sure were quick studies.

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The five of them stumbled out of the office into the Defense classroom in a drunken stupor, practically falling over each other. In fact, Lavender did fall over and Harry nearly followed after her trying to pick her up as he and the other three laughed at her.

They were drunk on dark magic. This was the aftereffects of using something like the cruciatus for an extended period of time. Made it understandable why people like Bellatrix would go mad from it, addicted to the obscene pleasure it brought it. Better than any drug, or so people said. It was certainly better than whatever painkiller he had woken up under after his surgery and left him groggy and weak. Dark magic made him energetic, and strong. He needed to be more careful with it.

Looking at the four shaky-legged girls, each as beautiful as the next, Harry had to sigh at the life he could have had.

"You know... In a better time we might have been stumbling through these halls drunk on firewhiskey instead of dark magic." Harry commented sadly.

"Oh right! Because Cassanova here is sooo charming he could get all four of us drunk on an evening dalliance." Daphne teased with a giggle.

"I mean, he managed to do so tonight didn't he?" Lavender teased the Slytherin back.

They all broke down into incoherent giggles after her little snip.

"I didn't mean it like that, Greengrass. I meant in general. Each of us being teenagers and getting into trouble on our last day at Hogwarts." Harry said, trying his hardest to get serious. "But I cannot exaggerate how dangerous being like this is. You've all seen what overuse of magic like that can do to people. It's necessary to know and even sometimes to use, but don't come to rely on the unforgiveables or overuse them."

"Is that why Lestrange is so cheery all the time?" Susan said giddily. "Life of an addict seems terrible, but she IS happy."

Not for much longer. She was high on the priority list of Death eaters to kill. As soon as he got his army out of there he'd get right on top of that. Oh good, he was sobering up.

"How are we going to get back to the seventh floor like this?" Padma pleaded.

"Yeah, and what are we going to tell everybody when we get there and they see us like this?" Susan asked. "They're going to think we ganged up on poor, demure Harry and used him like a sex toy."

Again, with the giggling. Was harry blushing? He couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. He really needed to bring male witnesses on missions like this.

Then, all of a sudden, everything became unbearably bright. Golden light flooded through every window and a tinkling sound echoed off the walls.

"Whoa! Who turned on the sun?" Lavender said dumbly.

"These are the wards. Something has activated them." Daphne said, as serious and sober as Harry.

He would make time for being impressed with her shaking off the effects of using dark magic later, for now, she was right. Hogwarts had locked itself down, feeling under attack. Harry's first guess was that it was reacting to their casually murdering two teachers, bit if that was the cause then it wouldn't have been such a delayed response.

Harry tentatively approached the nearest window and peered out. He had chosen the correct window for as soon as he did he noticed several shapes in the black lake, breaking the surface one by one. Masts of ships from every era in human history decorated otherwise plain and calm surface and reflected the bright light of the wards, which they were inside of.

"Huh." Harry said casually. "Well, there goes our stealth mission."

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Notes:

Hey guys, is this story dark enough for you? If not, I'm sure I can make it darker. Don't know how, but I'm positive I can.

Joking aside this chapter, this scene with the Carrows you just read, had been sitting outlined for at least a year. It was one of those scenes I had planned out that I was just DYING to get to. Along with the scenes where Harry personally kills certain individuals like Dolores and Fudge or finally fights Voldemort one on one. All far in the future, I'm sorry to say.