Harry Potter & Hell\'s Assassin

Chapter 4







When Harry became aware of his surroundings, he found himself in the same place he had been earlier that day: On the floor, surrounded by Death Eaters. Though Voldemort was nowhere to be seen. He wondered absently, when he had lost consciousness.



Blinking a few times to clear his vision, he noted that there seemed to be drawings on the floor beneath him. They were erratic and didn’t seem to follow any sort of pattern. There were also two black stones within his immediate line of sight. They seemed to all at once, absorb the surrounding light and emit a dark glow from within. Some sort of sparkly substance coated the floor as well and, upon closer inspection, himself.



With a sudden burst of amusement, which Harry later attributed to the onset of insanity, he realized that if there were a few skulls and some candles, this would look remarkably like the evil magic rituals he had seen on fictional television shows. Perhaps Voldemort had decided to raise a demon instead and offer him as a sacrifice.



A little chuckle escaped his parched lips, grabbing the attention of the Death Eaters. They glanced at one another with raised eyebrows and wary expressions.



“Shall we begin before the boy is too far gone to realize he is being sent to hell?”



That roused a round of laughs from the crowd, but they were soon shushed by Voldemort himself as the snake broke through the ring of excited Death Eaters.



“He is right, you know.” The Dark Lord hissed to Harry. “You are being sent to hell. Or, as close to it as you can get.” Voldemort dropped himself down to Harry’s level. “There are monsters there that you cannot imagine, Harry. Twisted, evil beings that will tear you apart or devour you whole. You do not stand a chance.”



With those words of encouragement, Voldemort rose and turned to his followers.



“Let us finish this once and for all.”



Deafening cheers erupted, crushing the silence.



Voldemort turned, his full attention focused on Harry, holding a small vial in his skeletal hand. Harry blinked. Surely something so small could not impact his life as much as Voldemort claimed.



As he was about to do his best to avoid drinking whatever was in that bottle, Voldemort waved his wand and Harry found himself unable to move. He watched, with a growing sense of horror, as Voldemort slowly approached him, a cruel smile upon his thin lips.



When the Dark Lord’s hand touched his mouth, Harry thought this might be what the touch of a vampire might feel like. The hand was as cold as ice, like the body it was attached to had been dead for a long time.



The thought made his stomach churn.



His jaw was forced open and Harry felt glass pressing against his lips. He winced at the touch. The glass was hot. And as soon as the liquid in the bottle made contact with his flesh he knew why.



The potion must have just been poured from the cauldron, for it felt like it had just been taken off the flame. It scalded his mouth and throat, and if it were not for the icy hand over his mouth, forcing him to swallow, he would have screamed.



As it was, he screamed anyway when the hand was removed. He was sure he would never be able to swallow or speak again. It felt like his esophagus was being incinerated as the potion worked its way down to his stomach. Distantly, Harry heard voices as the Death Eaters began waving their wands. Harry knew they were speaking, but not in English.



He had stopped screaming, gasping instead, trying to suck the cool air of the dungeon down his charred throat. The burning had receded, but an unnatural warmth was beginning to swell within his stomach. His heart hammered against his ribcage and his limbs trembled. Beads of sweat covered his body as an extreme feeling of weightlessness overtook him.



And suddenly, there was pain. More terrible than anything he knew. He was beyond torment. Beyond functioning. He could no longer think. There was only blackness and fire. He felt like he was being ripped apart, one molecule at a time.



Surely he would die soon. He would die and the agony would end.



But it wasn’t ending. It stretched on and on until he could no longer scream. He wasn’t anything anymore. His body was shredded. His mind, ruptured.



If this wasn’t hell, it was damn close to it.







* * * *







“YOU WHAT?!”



“I said, I couldn’t do anything!”



“BULLSHIT!”



“Sirius, please…” Remus pleaded with his friend.



“NO!” the animagus rounded on his friend, “He was there Moony! He was right there the whole time and he never –”



“That is enough!”



Sirius Black felt his jaw snap shut of its own accord as everyone turned wide eyes to Albus Dumbledore. The man did not look happy. He was standing at the head of the table, his palms open and flat on its weathered surface. He was glaring at Sirius angrily, his eyes, far from twinkling, were chips of ice.



“Severus risks his life on a daily basis to get information back to the Order. You are no fool, Sirius, therefore I am confident that you do realize this, no matter how irrationally you may act or speak sometimes.”



Sirius had sat back down and was sinking lower and lower in his chair under the harsh words.



But Dumbledore wasn’t finished yet.



“He has more information regarding your godson than any of us do and if you weren’t so busy accusing him of being an accomplice in murder, then we would have all seen this information by now.”



There was a pregnant pause in which Sirius swallowed compulsively and shrugged in an awkwardly apologetic fashion in Snape’s general direction.



Seemingly satisfied with that, Dumbledore sat back down in his chair and folded his hands across the tabletop in front of him, looking as serene and calm as ever. No one really knew what to say after the little display and the silence lingered on for a few more uncomfortable seconds before Tonks cleared her throat and said,



“So, Headmaster, you, uh, you said, um, we would have been able to see….the information?”



Albus smiled suddenly, somewhat sad looking.



“Yes.” He confirmed. “Severus has been kind enough to put the events of last night, what he saw of them, in a pensive.” At the shocked silence, Dumbledore elaborated, after glancing in the potions master’s direction. “We have agreed that retelling the story will not give us an accurate perception of what happened. Severus has informed me that there was a potion and a ritual involved. He has an idea of what the potion may be but, he was not the one who made it and so we will have to devote some research to garner a more complete knowledge of how it is made and what it does. The ritual is really the part we need to see, as Severus admits that he cannot remember the words of the spell cast upon Harry.”



Severus looked up from the table at this point, “After the spell was cast, there was also a phrase that was chanted repeatedly until Potter was…gone.”



Albus nodded, “I figured as much. Most rituals, especially ones that are powerful or dark, require that something be repeated several times to ensure there is a sufficient source of magic to sustain and feed the process until the task is complete.”



The wizened old man raised his wand and everyone turned to watch the stone basin float through the door and settled gently on the table.



“Now,” Albus began, “The memory is already in place. So, everyone, one finger only in the bowl, if you please, there are a lot of us here.”



As everyone rose from the table to properly position themselves around the pensive so that they were all able to reach, Dumbledore turned to Sirius with a heavy gaze. He rested a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and said quietly, “Sirius, if you do not wish to come along with the rest of us, I will understand. I’m sure you know, but my conscience compels me to tell you, that whatever means Voldemort used to send Harry away will not have been painless…nor swift.”



In other words Harry will have suffered extensively, and probably for a while. Sirius was no fool, he had already asked himself this question. Did he want to see what happened to Harry? He had heard Snape’s vague retelling. Did he really need to see the details? Would he be able to handle watching whatever had happen to his sixteen year old godson? He knew he must look a wreck, knew he was probably more pale than Snape, with rings around his eyes and an unshaven face. How could he not be? He hadn’t slept in days and the only food he’d managed to force down his constricted throat was a few pieces of bread every now and then.



With a determined look in his haunted eyes, Sirius Black nodded and joined the rest of the Order of the Phoenix around the pensive.



Remus laid a heavy hand on his shoulder in what little support he could offer and, together with the rest of the table, the two of them placed their index finger of their right hand into the swirling liquid of the pensive.







* * * *







When Sirius landed in the cold chamber his gaze was instantly pulled towards the motionless form of Harry Potter. Sirius closed his eyes in a futile attempt to control his emotions. The boy was a wreck. He lay on the floor in the center of the room. There were random red and white lines crisscrossing the floor beneath his body. He tried to decipher a pattern in the trails but could find nothing besides the fact that they all seemed to be about the same length. Their ends all stopping cleanly to make the vague outline of a circle.



There were also six black stones, all positioned a foot outside the perimeter of the circle, and all varying in size. It took a second for Sirius to realize what was so strange about the stones. They seemed to suck the light out of the space around them, absorbing it into their core, where it appeared charged and glowed with an, eerie, dark luminosity. It didn’t make sense, really. It seemed impossible.



And then Sirius realized that there was a circle of Death Eaters forming around Harry’s prone figure and the compulsion to run to his godson’s aide became almost overwhelming. Only the knowledge that he really couldn’t do anything, no matter how much he wanted to, stopped him from doing so.



And then everyone’s attention was drawn to Harry, as his eyes cracked open. He looked dazed, his eyes unfocused as he gazed at the lines on the floor beneath him. And, quite shockingly, the boy chuckled after a few seconds of staring at them.



Sirius felt his heart constrict. Had they tortured the poor boy to the point of insanity? By his appearance, it certainly didn’t seem all that unlikely. He had rolled himself onto his back, his legs still folded at the knees. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat and blood. His clothes ragged, torn and dirty. Blood trickled from both corners of his mouth and various other part of his body.



Suddenly, and quite vividly, Sirius pictured how Harry must have come to be in this state. Writhing on the floor under the cruciatus curse would have gotten him dirty. He would have torn clothes and flesh on the stones of the floor. And his throat would have, by now, been ripped to shreds and bleeding from his screaming.



Sirius mentally shook himself and tried to force those images out of his head and focus on the situation. Voldemort had moved into the large ring of Death Eaters where the Order stood. He was talking, taunting…



“He is right, you know.” The snake hissed, “You are being sent to hell. Or, as close to it as you can come.” Voldemort dropped himself down to Harry’s level. “There are monsters there that you cannot imagine, Harry. Twisted, evil beings that will tear you apart or devour you whole. You do not stand a chance.”



Again vivid images reeled through the animagus’ mind until he was shaken from his thoughts by deafening cries and cheers.



Voldemort then proceeded to immobilize Harry and force feed him a small vial. Sirius was starting to think that this wasn’t so bad, that maybe Harry’s torment had ended at the torture curse. But his hopes were dashed when Voldemort removed his hand from the boy’s mouth.



Harry screamed.



Clapping his hands over his ears, Sirius attempted to drown out the cries of pain. Several others were doing the same but it made no difference. They even heard Snape when he informed them all that the potion was made to feel scalding hot when in contact with flesh, even though, in reality, it was only at room temperature.



Harry had stopped screaming now and Sirius let his hands fall to his sides as they clenched and unclenched. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. His chest was tight and his throat was scratchy. He didn’t want to see any more. He didn’t know what was worse, Harry’s screams of pain or his ragged, shuddering breaths; an attempt to cool the illusion of his scalded throat.



There were words being chanted now, like Snape had said, and he hoped someone was listening to them because he couldn’t concentrate enough to make sense of the words.



And then it happened.



He was sure the boy’s throat was irreparable now. He had never heard a scream so hard. So raw. So primal. Blood streamed out the corners of his mouth, his back arching off the floor. And before the eyes of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter began to fall apart.



Like ashes off a charred log, particle sized pieces of the Boy Who Lived drifted away into the air as dust. There was no blood, no bone, no gore. He just…drifted apart. His screams of agony becoming more and more airy and fragmented until everything was just…gone.







* * * * *