Title: In Your Dreams

Author: SweetlyDesolated

Warnings: Torture, minor character death

Word Count: 1,743

Summary: Something has captured Harry's attention, something quite serious: torture. Only, that can't be right, can it? Could sweet, innocent Harry Potter really be capable of killing someone?

Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Harry Potter. Everything recognizable is the property of J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

He didn't know when it began, only that he started off hating it, and eventually desired to participate, to be the instigator.

Their screams chilled him in the beginning, and each night as he slept, he'd toss and turn in his binds at their tortured expressions. But eventually he stopped screaming, and just watched, and learned that the torture was an art. Every new scream pulled from the mouth of the victim was a different splash of color in the dank dungeons.

He didn't know how much time had passed; rather, he counted in terms of victims. He figured they went through one, maybe two a day. He counted two just to be sure, and he learned that he had been a captive for the better part of three months. It was after the second month when he started watching, and started to learn.

By the beginning of the fourth month, the amount of victims had downgraded to one every two days, as if the torturers were running out of people to torture. He hoped they wouldn't turn to him, as he wanted to learn, rather than scream.

Three victims and six days later, he started to mumble to himself in the silence of his cell. His grip on his magic had since faded, as he was kept in a null cell, but that didn't prevent the incantations from falling from parched lips. His eyes remained unfocused, as all his attention was inside his mind, his mind's eye watching numerous torture scenes play out.

Two days after the murmurs started, a new victim was thrust before him. His head rose from its position, chin against his chest, and continued back until he stared blankly up at the ceiling, cackling and twisting in his binds. He slowly gained control of himself and looked before him at the woman. She had been spelled, silenced and spread out in the air. Two strips of cloth over her body preserved his eyes.

His pupils dilated as a torturer stepped into the murky dungeon light, a wand in his grip, pointing toward the woman. Words fell from the masked man's mouth, and soon the woman was jerking in the air, though nothing came from her mouth.

He remained in his cell, eyes penetrating the woman as incantations dropped from his lips, taken up and cast by the other man.

It wasn't long before the woman stopped screaming, though her body continued to flail. Her eyes pierced him with a look of betrayal, and he couldn't help the next two words that dropped so enticingly from his mouth.

The torturer stepped into the shadows and disappeared; he was left staring at the woman's broken body for the next four days. Flies were abundant by the end of the first. It started to stink on the second, and pieces of flesh started to slip off the bones by the third. On the fourth, questing rats began to climb up the skeleton to feast on the bone marrow. That day, the body was removed by house elves, and all traces were banished to wherever banished objects went.

The next victim was levitated in by two masked men, and propped in the air before his cell. Both the men turned their wands onto him, and his chains dropped from his limbs. He fell to his knees and stared at his wrists, which were covered in sores and scars from his first two months of imprisonment.

One of the masked men entered his cell, though he kept his wand trained on him. He was handed a cup of water, and he drank it slowly, letting the liquid sooth his lips and mouth and throat. He eventually let the cup drop, where its pieces were vanished without hesitation. He slowly stood, swaying on his feet as his center of gravity was rediscovered. He had been chained up for nearly five months, after all, though magic kept him healthy enough.

Before long, the other masked man tore down the fat man's silencing spell, and curses began to fall from under the mustache. The words tore at him, sending him to his knees as he thrust his arms above his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't help but squirm into a corner of his cell and hide, even though its door was wide open and he could run out at any time.

He didn't hear the footsteps as the masked man approached, but he started and curled further into a ball as he was prodded in the side with a booted foot. His eyelids slid open fearfully, but he calmed as a stick of wood was bared to his view. With shaking fingers, he reached up and took his wand, before taking the hand of the Death Eater before him.

Harry held the wood in a death-like grip as his fingers seized around the thin wand. He focused on the cell door, which was the end of the null zone. He stepped out of his enclosure and fell to his knees again as the feeling of magic washed over his skin. His breathing thickened until he was sobbing at the rush over his depleted senses.

He remained on the floor, even as the one Death Eater started to curse his uncle senseless. Harry's lips formed incantations once his emotions had settled, and he propped himself up against the cell bars. The one masked man remained by his side, reading his lips and speaking the incantations for the other to use.

It didn't take long until Vernon was a babbling mess, soon killed with the same two words Harry had mumbled to his aunt four days previous. The one Death Eater made the fat man's remains disappear, while the other helped Harry to his feet. Together, the three walked from the null side of the dungeon cells. Harry trembled with exhaustion, and soon fell to his hands and knees.

An arm pulled him onto his knees, and soon Harry was cradled in the one Death Eater's arms. The two masked men started walking again, Harry's wand tucked away into the other's robes. It wasn't long before they were at the door to another cell. Harry was laid upon a mattress and soon slipped into an exhausted sleep as his magic channels sorted themselves out.

His magic kept Harry asleep for two days. By the fourth, he was feeding himself, rather than having a force-fed nutrition potion. On the sixth, three Death Eaters appeared, floating a babbling Dudley between them.

Harry slowly rose to his feet, and met the masked man at the cell door. His wand was returned to him, and this time Harry wasn't overwhelmed by the touch of its magic. His cell door was held open, and Harry walked from its enclosure by his own power. He advanced until he could stare Dudley in his fat-encircled eyes. With a tooth-baring smile, Harry whispered a single incantation, and those beady eyes flew wide with sudden pain.

He jerked at the spray of blood, as Harry hadn't used Sectumsempra on a close-by individual before. He let his wand rise, and prodded the tip into the beginning of one slash. With another whisper, the wound started smoking as the flesh was cooked. Harry trailed his wand through each cut, searing the wounds shut.

Dudley was twitching and unconscious by the time Harry was finished. One of the two other Death Eaters spelled him awake, and Dudley's head twisted and turned, as he couldn't find Harry. He was soon screaming as his bowels forcibly erupted to the ground, and streams of fat fell from his ruptured gut.

Harry wrinkled his nose at the stench, and the third Death Eater made the mess vanish. Harry was rather surprised to see that his cousin actually looked like a normal human being with all the fat gone, save the extra ton of floppy skin now covering the body.

He walked around to the front of Dudley's dangling body, and the tip of his wand lit on fire. He lowered its tip until it was just above the nasty blond hair covering Dudley's public area, and started to sear everything away. The blood-curdling screams started up again as Harry trailed lines up and down the flaccid penis, eventually curling it around the base and burning the useless flesh off the boy's body. His balls were next, falling one by one, as the delicate skin was burned away.

Harry was bored at this point. Dudley's screams were only serving to give him a headache, and he was tired from standing for so long. He flicked his wand, and ropes spilled out of the tip, trailing over and tightening around Dudley's neck. They pulled and braided together to form a noose, eventually tying to the ceiling. Harry handed his wand to one of the masked men and returned to his cell, where he lay on the mattress and rolled over to face the wall.

He let his eyelids droop shut, and a small smile graced his lips as choking noises assaulted his ears. Harry fell into a peaceful sleep as his cousin suffocated feet away.

Eight days later, only one of which done by Harry's magic, he awoke to sunlight hitting him in the face. He slowly sat up and gasped when he saw he was in the hospital wing. A moment later, Madame Pomfrey came bustling into his sights.

"Good morning, Harry. How does your head feel? You took a nasty tumble down the stairs two days ago, and you were severely concussed." Harry remained speechless as she prodded at the back of his head with her wand. He winced when she pulled his hair away from an unhealed cut. "You should be well enough to go to dinner," the matron stated, and left Harry alone.

The foot of the bed was covered with an obscene amount of candy and get-well cards. Harry shifted down the blankets to read and eat, as he was quite hungry, regardless of the nutrition potions that Madame Pomfrey spelled into his stomach every seven hours.

One note caught his attention. It wasn't written on ostentatious paper, like half of the well wishes were. It had nothing distinguishing on it, merely a single line of black-inked words. 'Ten days later, Harry…' the paper read. With a gasp, he pulled the long sleeves of his pajama top up to his elbows and stared vacantly down at scarred wrists.

End notes: Again, I seriously need to go through my files. This is the second complete story I've found so far! This may be continued, but then again, perhaps not. Keep this one as a possibility.

Now, who was creeped out? Just laughed? Completely clueless? Don't worry. I'm here for you.

Thanks for reading!

~Deso