I am, with time, beginning to suspect that I am at least slightly addicted to the Harmony pairing. No matter what storyline I am thinking of, it always ends up reverting to a Harmony pairing, or a Harmony-harem pairing, or… or something along those lines.

This one, however, was always meant to be Harmony. Fair warning: the story contains murder, rape [not of Hermione] and justification for war.

Enter now, if you dare.

X…X

A young man – he could not have been more than twenty-seven – stood at the window of what appeared to be a very large airplane, though a flying ship would describe the vehicle better. Despite his age, one would have no difficulty in believing that before them stood the second-most powerful person in the world. His green, piercing gaze swept over the city below him, watching as its command centers and government outposts were taken over efficiently. Beside his ship flew seven others, though these were not meant for passengers and so devoted considerably less attention to comfort. These ships contained complex runic arrays which blocked most forms of magic – including, importantly, magical communication – over a large area. The few forms of magic not blocked by it were the ones used by the forces below.

The door behind Harry – for the man's name was Harry Potter – opened to admit a very feminine visitor. Her name was Hermione Jean Granger, and she was – even though she did not look it, or herself know it – the single most powerful person in the entire world, for Harry Potter listened to her words and danced at her whims, and the person who controlled Harry Potter controlled a great deal indeed.

She was petite, coming only up to Harry's chest, and was not particularly curvaceous in any region. She had chocolate-brown eyes and a lighter shade of hair that was currently pulled into a messy ponytail. Overall, she gave the impression of being somehow soft, not in the manner of being spoiled, but merely gentle in a way that a few females – and no males – are able to achieve.

She was barefoot, clad only in a Muggle t-shirt and cotton pajamas, and with the morning sun lighting up the dust around her, appeared both angelic and fairy-like.

Her alias, on the rare occasions when she went somewhere where her actual name might be badly received – rare, for seldom did Harry let her go anywhere that her safety was not completely assured – was Hestia. It had been chosen by Harry and he considered it most fitting, for in his eyes she resembled greatly in character the Greek goddess of the hearth – warm and open and loving, passionate when need be, yet largely peaceful in a world filled with violence.

She joined him at the window, and for a few silent moments, they stared down at the city together. Then she shivered and turned to bury her face in Harry's chest, as an arm came up to wrap around her shoulders. "I hate this part." She murmured, and looked up at the conqueror with large, sad eyes. "You make sure their lives are better after all this, don't you?" she begged.

She had asked this question several times earlier – so many, in fact, that they had both lost count – despite the fact that she knew Harry would never lie to her. He replied anyway, as he always did.

"Better and safer and happier, love." He said softly, and in this he was not entirely untruthful. He had a certain method to capturing new cities, and it ensured that leadership changed with the people usually none the wiser. He would block off all communications for a particular region and proceed to take over, through the element of surprise, those buildings and agencies that tended to be important while running a dictatorship – the government buildings, news reporters, and so on. He would immediately implement strong laws in the direction he wished to take the world – against discrimination and prejudice and violence – and gradually release the fact of the takeover to the public, so slowly that they barely realized it had actually happened. This method had the rather important advantage of ensuring that no other nation even realized that any change had occurred in their neighbors. Harry did not seek to implement his culture upon another nation, nor to steal its identity – he had learnt from History, though not from his old schoolteacher.

There were, as there always were, a few intensely patriotic citizens who took objection to this uninvited rule and attacked the invaders. These people had a tendency to quietly disappear and never be seen again.

Hermione knew of the existence of such people, but preferred not to ask too much about them.

But there were a rare few who had dared to attack Harry himself, or worse, strike him where it would hurt. There were only a few people in the world that Harry truly, deeply cared about – Hermione, an old half-giant in Scotland, and a Snowy Owl that seemed to have no concept of ageing – yet these he guarded with a fierce, terrible protectiveness that ensured that any harm to befall them would have to be a very dangerous sort of harm indeed.

Hermione was completely unaware of any such attacks, as were the attackers. Harry personally broke them – he had an intrinsic talent for the judicious application of not pain but pain – and remade them into personal servants, mostly in some way for Hermione.

He found it ironic. These people had tried to take Hermione's life, and so he had given theirs to her. However, while they would merely be content to throw her life away, he preferred to ensure that Hermione obtained the maximum usage from them before they died.

Someone knocked at the door, and Harry called for them to enter. Another woman came in, at least a decade older than either of the other occupants, but in good physical condition for all that, corded muscles clearly visible on her body. Despite the fact that she was obviously older, she kept her head bowed deferentially as she walked towards them.

She was taller than Hermione, coming perhaps up to Harry's chin. Her blonde hair matched her grey eyes perfectly, giving hints of Slavic origin. She too, was barefoot, and on her ankles, she wore bracelets with tiny bells on them which chimed softly and musically with each step she took. There was a silver metal collar around her neck and a strap around her right forearm in which she kept a wand. She wore nothing else.

She placed a tea tray on a small table and waited, peering at the couple from under heavy eyelashes. Hermione smiled fondly at her. "Thank you, Alhainen." She said, and the woman in question gazed at the both of them with a delighted adoration.

Hermione rested in Harry's embrace for another moment before, with a sigh, she began to pull away. She was hindered in this by the fact that Harry's arm, having slid down to her waist, was now pulling her back to him. Before she could speak, Harry had lowered his lips to hers.

When they finally broke apart, there was a slight flush in Hermione's pale cheeks. "The tea will get cold." She said, and Harry briefly paused in his activities at her neck to reply.

"I'm sure Alhainen wouldn't mind heating it again." He said and Alhainen nodded, though the question was clearly moot, seeing that Hermione's arms were wrapped around him, her neck bent to give him the best possible access, and she was making sounds that indicated that he should continue doing what he was doing and possibly go much, much further.

Yet we do not need to know what they did. In fact, any individual of sufficient maturity and an imaginative bent of mind would be able to visualize precisely what activities would be undertaken in that room, especially given that no one in the entire world except the lady currently enjoying Harry Potter's attentions would ever have the temerity to interrupt Harry Potter in any of his chosen pastimes.

Yet this was not always so. There was a time when Harry Potter was just Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, hero, friend and good person. A time when a red-eyed man, a God among wizards, was still in some semblance of power, not driven into a wild exile, surviving only due to his own prodigious skill. A time when the Ministry of Magic, for all its flaws and failures, still stood as a bastion of the people. There are, today, still a few who remember those times; let us go back to them.

Let us go back to when they changed.

X…X

Hogwarts Great Hall

12 Years Ago

Harry watched in mounting bewilderment and frustration as more and more hate mail piled up in front of Hermione. He was aghast – he could never have imagined that this would be the end result of an interview with Rita Skeeter.

Hermione, moreover, seemed to be taking these messages to heart – she would flinch whenever she read another particularly hurtful comment, but masochistically continued to open up the letters.

She let out a sudden, pained gasp as a fluid contained within one of the letters spilled onto her hands. Pustules started to form wherever it touched, and tears welled in her eyes as a familiar odor enveloped their section of the Great Hall.

Harry paused only a moment to stuff the offending letter into an empty pocket of his bag, before hurrying to escort Hermione to the Medical Wing. His fists clenched tight when he heard Malfoy's laughter behind him.

It was not until much later that he was able to once more reflect upon the incident in the Great Hall – night had fallen upon the castle and all of England was asleep. By this time, his initial fury had cooled, but there still remained a quiet, bubbling anger that refused to simmer down. In his head, he could still hear Malfoy and his bootlickers snickering at Hermione's misfortune.

In Harry's three years at the school, there had been at least five isolated incidents where his life had been in severe danger – each time he had passed the test. Every year, for one cause or another, the school was threatened; every year he saved it. Every year he was the one who brought salvation, the lamb let out to draw the serpent away, the sacrificial Christ on a cross of Magical Britain's making. He had dueled with Voldemort before a magical mirror, he had danced with a Basilisk in a Chamber deep below, he had run with a werewolf and flown with the innocent and driven the Dementors away – surely, he had earnt some measure of respect from the people.

It seemed he had not, and so on his bed he had brought two items. The first was a newspaper clipping, an article meant only to inflame anger and incite jealousy, every word a barb meant to cut deep; an article, in short, that had been written by Ms. Skeeter. Despite the blatant untruths with which it was filled, and the various objections and invasions of privacy that Harry took issue with, he could not condemn the journalist for this article. As she had pointed out, the Prophet existed to sell, and while he did not agree with the method she chose, he understood it to be merely business.

He would, of course, prevent any such article from being published in the future. If, after all that he had done, the Wizarding World still believed him unworthy of their respect, then he would seize it from them, tear it from their still-beating hearts until awe filled every gaze. And then no one would dare malign those who stood by his side (Hermione's eyes, filled with tears and a rare incomprehension as she struggled to understand why anyone would hate her so).

The other item was clutched tightly in his hands, for the purpose of which he had worn Dragonhide gloves. It was an envelope, still covered with traces of Bubotuber pus, on which the sender had foolishly – or perhaps arrogantly – mentioned a name.

The envelope was clenched tightly, but Harry's hands were steady. There was no uncertainty in his mind, not now, not in this. Sofia Lane was a name he would remember.

X…X

Yet, for all his self-sworn oaths, Harry was hampered by an absolute ignorance on the process of exacting a fitting justice, as well as a lack of phone book-like items in the Wizarding World.

It was as he swam in the Black Lake that realization struck home, and despite the seemingly-muddy waters, his eyes were wide with wonder.

Mental and physical activity were poles apart, and so even as he reached the village of the Merpeople, his mind was spinning with plans and ideas – plans for a vengeance that would repay every slight on Hermione, Hermione who had stood by him even as an oozing pestilence spread painfully across her hands, Hermione who now lay tied to a stone beneath the waters, even as his blood coursed with rage (who-tries-who-dares-bring-fire-from-above-upon-them-all).

The Merpeople shook their spears and gave cries that seemed rather less musical and more war-like than the egg, evidently indicating that he should take Ron instead. Unable to respond, Harry unconsciously bared his teeth at them, gently cradling Hermione closer.

He was fond of Ron, honestly, but for Hermione he would turn the Black Lake red with the Mermen's blood.

He encountered fewer obstacles on his way back, steering clear of the few that he saw from a distance (was that half a shark?). He hoped desperately that he would not run into the Giant Squid – while normally quite friendly, it responded to humans moving in on its territory with extreme prejudice. Then again, it might just confuse him for a merman.

Harry surfaced a good twenty minutes before the one-hour limit, and Hermione immediately awoke, gasping and clinging to Harry as the shock of awakening in a cold lake in February hit her. Hermione looked adorably like a fluffy drowned rat, mused Harry, and it would never occur to him that he used 'adorable', 'Hermione' and 'drowned rat' in the same short sentence.

Harry spent the next twenty minutes busily ignoring everyone except Hermione, taking great care to give a special amount of cold disdain to the numerous clamoring reporters and to Ludo Bagman, who was enthusiastically praising 'his fiendish cunning in taking advantage of an ambiguous situation to hamstring his competition'. Harry was not entirely sure what he was talking about, but was fairly certain that replying would only encourage the wizard.

The news that he had placed first by a handy margin was of little interest to him considering the nature of the task, despite the many reassurances Hermione gave him that it had been entirely voluntary.

Hermione just shook her head at his stubbornness and smiled up at him, soft and slow, her eyes warm with appreciation and fondness. Harry saw her then – her dress clinging to her damp skin in a way that made him stand between her and the audience, her lips pink and slightly parted – and thought about kissing her.

X…X

"Dobby." He called, seated in an abandoned classroom with the Marauder's Map next to him. The Elf in question popped into existence next to him, immediately launching into a monologue of praise guaranteed to soothe the ego of the proudest king.

"Dobby." He said, glancing at the Map to make sure no one else was nearby. "I need you to do some things for me, and I need you to do them quietly."

In hindsight, these are not the words one would expect to mark the eve of the greatest revolution the world has ever seen – even if, as in this case, it passed mostly unnoticed – yet this is how it began.

X…X

Dobby popped onto his bed late one night, as Harry had instructed, and the boy barely twitched in surprise. The House-Elf nodded silently – another instruction from Harry – and popped away again.

From beneath his pillow, Harry withdrew three items – his wand (brother to another, brother to the wand that all of Magical Britain feared), a map of Hogwarts, and an Invisibility Cloak whose history surpassed the memory of even the Wizarding World, lost now to myth and fairy tale. The latter two he carefully folded up and kept into his pockets, while his wand he tucked into the waistband of his pajamas.

This done, he walked quietly but not overtly stealthily to the bathroom, drawing the curtains around his bed closed again after he had clambered out. In the bathroom, he activated the Map and draped the Cloak around himself. He then proceeded to hit every possible portion of his body with Silencing Charms. He had learnt one fifth-year Charm for the First Task. He had spent three weeks perfecting his mastery of this one.

He crept out of the dorm, paying more attention to the Map than to his surroundings. Once he reached the Common Room, he encountered what he believed would be the biggest obstacle to overcome, and the only part of his plan that he was forced to leave to chance. The Fat Lady.

He laid a hand on the knob of the portrait and grinned. "The Lady's luck." He whispered to himself, and pulled the doorway inwards. "The Luck that Pulls, not the Luck that Pushes."

He tiptoed out. The Fat Lady slept, and slumbered on as he gently closed her again.

He crept down to the First Floor, taking long and circuitous routes to avoid any person he spotted on the Map – which, on three separate occasions, was Filch. He then used a commonly known passageway hidden behind a bust which, despite taking one upwards, led to Grounds outside.

After all, logic and linear geometry is for the weak.

Harry's wariness ascended to paranoia when he found himself enveloped in the darkness of the grounds, the sliver of visible moon doing nothing for illumination. Cursing softly at his lack of forethought, he cast a Lumos under his Cloak and immediately checked the Map for anyone nearby.

Surprisingly, no one was wandering on the grounds of Hogwarts at five minutes to eleven in early March. Harry stoically refused to allow this fact to relax him in the slightest.

He reached the edge of the Hogwarts Wards and immediately realized his mistake. He couldn't levitate anything while he maintained the Lumos charm, but he needed to levitate a stick to freeze the Whomping Willow, which was impossible to do blind.

"Fuck fuck fuckity-fuck." He muttered. "Fuckity-fuckity-fuck."

One cannot help but feel disappointed at the lack of creativity shown by Harry Potter at the age of 14 in his choice of expletives.

In true Gryffindor fashion, Harry saw a problem he could not solve and decided to ignore it. In the process of this he discovered that Invisibility Cloaks were perfectly capable of fooling trees, even ones as… volatile, as the Whomping Willlow.

Inside the Shrieking Shack, Harry kept the Map open on a nearly-destroyed chair and called for Dobby again. The elf popped in and immediately began giving a detailed description of an object, which Harry transfigured from a table leg.

Five minutes later, he held a short ebony stick that Dobby assured was indistinguishable from Rita Skeeter's wand.

The boy grasped the elf's hand, and they popped away.

X…X

Cul-de-Sac, Immort Alley

Two beings crouched, hidden, under an Invisibility Cloak at the very end of the street, a faint few lights glimmering out through the windows at the very top of the building complex. It was from one of these windows that a shiny water-beetle descended, landing on the cobbled pathway before transforming suddenly into a peroxide-blond witch.

Under the Cloak, Harry grinned, wondering what the punishment for being an illegal unregistered Animagus was. He did not particularly care – it was mere idle curiosity. The point, after all, was moot.

He followed her as she walked down to the alley proper, her clicking heels perfectly covering the sound of Dobby popping away; plausible deniability was a concept that elves were very familiar with. He slipped off his Invisibility Cloak, now fully visible to anyone who were to glance into the street, but she never turned around – why would she? There was nothing behind her to hear.

Three paces before the Alley mouth, he reached out with cloth-banded fingers, one hand grasping her shoulder, the other cupping her temple. A sharp crack marked her neck breaking.

He gently steered her around, examining her skin and face for any kind of blemishes. Seeing none, he withdrew her wand from her handbag and replaced it with the transfigured stick. He then dragged her cooling corpse to the side and viciously slammed her head down on a waist-high outcropping of rock. Blood trickled out of her scalp and coated the stone.

It would have been easier to stun her from behind, but the sudden death of a famous journalist was bound to attract the wrong kind of attention – in this case, Aurors – and Harry had no idea how far their ability to detect magic performed at a specific site extended.

He carefully arranged her limbs to make it seem like she had slipped while walking and broken her neck when her head had hit the wall. To complete the picture, he slipped off one of her shoes and broke the heel, leaving the pieces lying near her foot. He stood and surveyed his work – Pablo Picasso looking over one of his pieces of art – before lowered her eyelids so they did not show her wide, fear-filled eyes.

He ducked back under his Invisibility Cloak and walked into Immort Alley, calling for Dobby when the street was no longer in sight.

As a crime, it was a thing of beauty, the kind of sight that would have brought joy to the mind of Sherlock Holmes. A sordid deed, perhaps, one which necessitated tenebrous paths and moonless nights, yet it seemed almost irreverent that this, the first act of the greatest, grandest play in all of history should go unwitnessed.

Such is the way of things; deeds of valor and sky-chaining ambition begin in the dark. A single violin plays in the shadows and so the symphony is begun, with all the world to sway to its tune. It is the nature of men to inevitably bow to the great, and without doubt, the trials and tribulations that made up the future of Harry Potter were great indeed.

Thusly would the world one day bow to the Boy-Who-Lived. After all, Harry Potter did many great things; terrible, yes, but great…

X…X

A narrator with a flair for the dramatic might have recorded Harry Potter as having thrown up when he reached back at Hogwarts, sobbing to himself and believing himself tainted and Dark for having killed another person. But Harry Potter had burnt a man alive with his bare hands when he was eleven years old, and he had not sobbed then – he had no reason to shed tears now.

The truth is that, for all his friendliness and otherwise-normal characteristics, ten years alone in a cupboard had ensured that the Boy-Who-Lived was fundamentally as broken an individual as ever accidentally inhaled a spider.

On that pale spring morning, Harry instead lay awake on his bed until six and stared at the ceiling. Since the day after the Wand-Weighing, he had taken up the cause of the injustices perpetrated against Hermione – pro bono, as it were – and had then promptly appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. This decision, rather than giving him a far-reaching power, caused a great amount of complexities for him. He took his responsibilities seriously, and wearing four hats, he sought to fulfill each of their duties to the fullest extent.

The crusader had demanded an absolute vengeance against the reporter, and so he could be nothing less than satisfied with her ignominious death.

The jury was ruled by sentiment; any and all emotions were firmly in favor of Hermione, as far as Harry was concerned. The jury was satisfied.

The executioner had no opinion in the decision, but merely strove for as clean and anonymous a task as possible. In this, he too was satisfied.

The judge, however, lay in a moral quandary. That Rita Skeeter had deliberately and maliciously targeted Hermione was undeniable, and that fact that this attack occurred in the line of Ms. Skeeter's work was irrelevant. The intent to harm and defame was clear, and on both counts the deceased reporter had succeeded. The crux lay in the fact that a fitting sentence could only be devised and visited upon a person via the input of the injured party, and so remained dependent on the wishes of the same. A great deal of flexibility was thus accorded to the sentence, such that it could vary to the satisfaction of the accuser.

Yet the punishment had already been visited upon Rita Skeeter without input from Hermione, and no further action could be taken. The judge's dilemma lay in the validity – the constitutionality, so to speak – of the decision.

At six in the morn, he rose, not having slept that night, but too awake with the knowledge of Rita Skeeter's fate (vengeance rained down from the sky like the wrath of a god, treading softly behind on silenced feet in dim-lit alleys) and the certainty of resolution to feel the need for rest.

The judge's satisfaction was dependent upon Hermione's satisfaction with Skeeter's eventual end. Harry, as her friend, was confident that she would not wish for further pain upon the late journalist, yet the judge required absolute confirmation to proceed.

The death of a prominent reporter would not, as Harry had earlier noted, go unremarked, especially in the newspaper by which she had been so successfully retained. Unless he was much mistaken, Rita Skeeter would write the headlines one last time, and all Harry had to do was seek Hermione's opinion on the death – and Hermione was not famed for reticence in sharing her opinion, whether the matter concerned her or not.

For an hour, he waited in the Gryffindor Common Room, until it was brightened by the bushy-haired girl's descent from her dorm. Half an hour later, Ronald Weasley would awake to find that the two-thirds of the Golden Trio had moved to dine without him, a state of affairs which he found profoundly unsatisfactory.

At a quarter-to-eight, the regular Hogwarts mail delivery swept into the Great Hall courtesy of the high windows left open specifically for this purpose. Among them were a host of newspapers – mostly the Daily Prophet, along with a few subscriptions to the Quibbler from students who felt sorry for Luna Lovegood. Both these publications bore the news of the Queen of the Quills in their own inimitable style, and the news spread throughout the Hall in alternate waves of shocked silence and frenzied speculation.

Ron raised his eyebrows as he read aloud choice excerpts from the paper that Seamus had handed him. "Rita Skeeter, beloved reporter, – hah – found dead under mysterious circumstances… body discovered near Immort Alley… seems to have tripped and broken her neck around midnight… Aurors conclusively cut out possibility of foul play as no magic detected. Funny, I'd have thought that if she died, it would be because she pissed off someone and they offed her."

Ron paused, then looked startled when Hermione failed to reprimand him for his language. He exchanged an uncharacteristically serious glance with Harry.

"Oye, Potter! Have a look at today's Quibbler. Seems that you're the prime suspect in the murder, and broke Skeeter's neck with your bare hands!"

And as the Boy-Who-Lived nearly died from choking on a fruit, he learnt (and he would later remember this lesson, remember it and rue it for he never came closer to being undone than by the Quibbler) never to underestimate a Lovegood.

X…X

Harry drew Hermione aside in an alcove after breakfast – she had yet to speak a single word since the newspapers had arrived.

"Are you alright, Hermione?" he asked. "I mean, after the news…"

She finally raised her head to meet his eyes, and Harry realized with a start that she was afraid. Did she fear the Skeeter's murderer would now come after her – if so, Harry would simply have to confess. He could not have Hermione living in a perpetual terror.

"That horrible Skeeter woman is dead." She whispered. "She's dead, Harry, and I don't feel sorry for her. I-I'm…" Hermione choked back a sob and continued. "I'm glad she's gone, Harry, what kind of person does that make-"

"No!" cut off Harry, perhaps somewhat sharper than he intended. "Don't go there, Hermione, don't try to blame yourself for this. You didn't kill her, you did not tell anyone to kill her – unless you are trying to tell me that you, Hermione Granger, ordered a hit on Rita Skeeter."

Hermione gave a weak, watery smile. "No, no hit." She said.

"Then you have no right to take the credit of Rita Skeeter's death from the person who killed her."

He continued, softer now. "Guilt is a terrible burden, Hermione, and a terrible punishment; leave it to weigh down the one who is responsible, let him bear that weight. Skeeter was a malicious shrew who took pleasure in hurting you, and you have no reason to be anything but glad that she cannot torment you any longer. Not feeling sorry at her death does not leave you anything less than a wonderful, kind, caring person."

She bit her lip, and as Harry's eyes followed the motion, he realized for the first time that his feelings towards Hermione might be slightly friendlier than those of the average friend – another historic moment in a tale filled with historic moments. "Are you sure, Harry?" she asked in a small, forlorn voice. "I'm really all those things you said?"

And in another first, Harry enveloped the girl in a soft hug. "All that and more." He murmured into her hair. "How many years have you put up with me?"

Put up with me for a little while longer, I beg you, put up with me for the rest of our days. Do not leave, never leave me now. I have tasted of the Cup of Friendship and found it sweet; I cannot go back to walking it alone.

X…X

Sofia apparated from work – a well-paying, if somewhat long-houred job as an accountant for Fibrisher's Household Fittings – directly onto the front step of her apartment. Setting the tip of her wand on the doorknob, she had already unlocked the door before she realized that there was someone standing silently behind her – a lamentable lack of security which was, unfortunately, the norm in Wizarding Britain following the events of the Samhain of 1981. She spun around, nearly dropping her wand in surprise, to see a short teenager standing behind her in casual robes. The last rays of the fading sunrise struck his face, giving his skin a soft pink glow and illuminating a clearly visible scar on his forehead.

Her eyes – normally almond-shaped, with heavy lashes – became completely, perfectly circular.

"Ms. Lane?" Harry Potter asked politely. She nodded, not quite trusting her voice. He gave a small smile. "My name is Harry Potter. May I come in?"

"O-of course." She stammered, stepping out of the way and gesturing for him to pass. "Make yourself at home!"

She was inordinately grateful that she had cleaned up the house in the morning before she had left for work – living with the embarrassment of Harry Potter seeing her underwear lying on the sofa would have been quite impossible.

Returning quickly from her bedroom where she carelessly flung her bag and outer robe, she was surprised to see her guest still sitting in the darkness, tucking a short, dark-colored wand into his coat. She raised a questioning eyebrow, which he seemed to misinterpret.

"I hope you do not mind, Ms. Lane, that I took the liberty of raised a few Silencing Charms. I would rather that our discussion remain as private as possible."

"Oh, no problem at all, no!" She assured him, her insides quivering at the fact that he wanted to have a private talk with her. "And call me Sofia, I'm not even thirty yet. I was just wondering – I mean, that's not your wand, is it? Yours is holly, eleven and three-fourth inches…"

She trailed off at the frankly astonished look she was receiving and blushed. "It was mentioned in an article, and I – umm, I try to keep up with your life."

He smiled warmly at her, easing her fears that he would think she was stalking him. "Please, sit down, Sofia." He said, patting the seat next to him. "This discussion is, for me, quite a personal one, and it would be easier if we both were seated."

She settled herself gingerly on the sofa, and Merlin's magical balls on an anvil, she was sitting next to Harry Potter so close their knees were touching, and he wanted to have a personal conversation with her!

"Sofia, do you remember a letter you sent to one Hermione Granger a few months ago?" he asked, his eyes fixed on hers. She nodded, and he continued. "Why did you send it?"

She swallowed. "I was just so- so angry that anyone would try to manipulate you like that! No Muggleborn has the right to treat you like that, not after you saved us all from You-Know-Who. No one has a right to treat you like that!" She said fiercely.

A long pause followed. Harry's gaze seemed lost in the distance, while Sofia frantically reviewed her statement mentally to see if she could have offended him somehow.

"I must thank you." He said softly. "You may have caused a great deal of pain to Hermione Granger in the process, but you showed me the truth. You opened my eyes, Sofia Lane-"

He had begun to turn towards her, but froze midway, his eyes locked now on something behind her. She turned to see what he was staring at but saw nothing behind her worth mention. As she twisted back to question him, she had a split second to notice her wand – which she had left on the table – in his fist, before a backhand across her face threw her off the sofa and onto the floor. The taste of copper filled her mouth.

"Imperio."

And suddenly it didn't matter, her split lip or the fact that her wand was in his hand, the Voice in her head was speaking to her, and as long as It stayed in her head and she did what It said, everything would be alright.

"Were you expecting anyone?"

Expecting? No. She had been very happy when Harry Potter had come to her home, but she had not expected anyone to visit.

"Were you going to meet someone today?"

No. She used to have a girlfriend, but they had broken up nearly a month ago.

"Make up a good excuse for why you will be unavailable for an unforeseeable amount of time, and cannot be contacted in any way. Do not give any specific details. Write letters to anyone who would worry if they did not see you for an extended period containing this excuse."

She would be gone for an unforeseeable amount of time? Well, she wouldn't want her friends or her father to worry.

"Do you have an owl?"

No. She disliked birds.

"How do you normally contact these people?"

Mostly through the Owl Emporium, sometimes through the Floo.

"Pack up all your belongings as if you are leaving forever and vacating this house."

Alright.

"Do you have a house-elf?"

No. She wasn't rich enough.

"If you were to disappear right now, and these letters were sent out, how long would it take for someone to notice that you were gone?"

Could take as long as a few months. She wasn't really a very social person.

Sofia stumbled and nearly fell over, gasping in surprise as the spell was lifted. Shrunken boxes lay on the staircase like building blocks, and the apartment itself was completely bare. Harry Potter snarled at her, the ebony wand raised in his hand, a hand that shook with rage.

X…X

"Crucio."

And she screamed, writhing on the floor in agony that in Harry's mind was no less than she deserved (She hurt Hermione, she made her cry). A stain had spread outwards from her crotch, and she collapsed, whimpering, when Harry took a breath, curling into a fetal ball.

"Please…no." she gasped, and Harry growled as he raised his wand once more (How dare she, how dare she beg for mercy after all that she had done).

"Crucio."

He held it for longer this time, until her limbs stiffened and her voice broke from the screaming. He stood over her prone form.

"I'm sorry…" she sniffed, tears and mucus running down her face. "Please stop – I'll do anything…"

"CRUCIO!" he shouted this time, determined to make her understand. She was almost entirely soundless this time, her fingers clawing desperately at the ground. He dropped to his knees over her, his hand closing around her throat as mindless rage overtook him.

Her struggles slowly ceased, but (she had to pay, Death was an escape and she could not flee from him) he would not allow that, releasing her neck and letting her draw in desperate, whooping breaths. He tore at her clothes, ripping them off uncaringly (it was not lust but a sentence, no mercy, no hope, no salvation). She fought weakly as she realized his intentions, but he pinned her down and pressed the stolen wand against her temple.

"Crucio." He hissed forcefully.

Blood trickled from her nose as she arched nearly impossibly, her face locked in a rictus of terror and agony. Through it all, Harry violated her, unmindful of both her pleasure and his own, seeking only to hurt her, to break her entirely from spirit to soul before he killed her (Because she had hurt Hermione, had burnt those beautiful, delicate hands and brought tears to her eyes and she had no RIGHT, because Hermione was a better person than she could ever hope to be, a better person than anyone in the world and more deserving of Heaven than the angels themselves, and so this was her sentence).

Again and again and on, forgetting time, forgetting bodily constraint, never letting her slip into death or escape through insanity, always giving her time enough to recover from the Cruciatus before the next bout.

You hurt her, you hurt her and she was mine.

"Please, no… please." (How dare she beg, how dare she plead).

"Crucio."

You should never have hurt her, you should never have touched her – this is your sentence.

"I shouldn't have- please…" (She shouldn't have but she did, and it was done).

"Crucio."

Your life is forfeit and it is mine, and I am the executioner of justice.

"Yes… yours, please stop-" (Not yet broken, only bent, not yet done).

"Crucio."

You are nothing; nothing, and no one, and mine to end!

"Master… please- I don't…"

"CRUCIO!"

You could never atone for what you have done; you could never begin to atone for it.

"I'm sorry… Master ple-"

What are you sorry for?!

"I-I don't know."

Surprise broke through the haze of blood-rage and vengeful wrath that had consumed Harry. He took a step back, calmer now, the first vestiges of exhaustion beginning to seep into his bones. It was, he noticed, dark outside.

She lay, slumped, as he had left her, too far gone to stir from her position. Thin blood vessels had burst in her eyes and in her forehead, sending across starbursts of clearly-visible red. Blood trickled out of her nose and mixed with vomit, pooling around her hair. Even now, she retched, bringing up only acidic bile and blood which dribbled freely down her chin; she was unable even to turn her head. Fresh bruising was livid against her skin, across her face, around her neck, on her breasts and stomach, with blood and semen and faeces covering her thighs. Her vagina seemed near-destroyed, torn and swollen and terribly crushed, urine and blood leaking out in seemingly equal measure. Noticeable too, was the unforgiving Cruciatus exposure – her limbs trembled, and her body shook in irregular spasms.

It was a terrible, piteous spectacle, but nobody wept for Sofia Lane, not even the woman who once was her.

"You don't know?" he asked, curiosity taking over now that his anger was spent.

"No, M-Master." She managed through a torn throat, a few tears pooling in her grey eyes, eyes that were blank and innocent, gazing up at him with guilt-filled reverence.

"What do you know?"

"I am y-yours, Master." She scratched out. She struggled upright, her arms betraying her several times and leaving her collapsed on the floor, and pushed herself towards Harry, disregarding the mixture of fluids that smeared across her skin as she dragged her body across the floor. An eternity later, she managed to cover the single step back that that the young hero had taken and collapsed, pressing kisses to his feet.

"Wi-will you have me, Master?" she asked, her voice small and vulnerable.

For a long, slow moment, he considered her. "Do you know who you are?" he asked, and she shook her head, her cheek still resting on his foot.

"Get up." He ordered, and she struggled to rise.

The revolution began in a street off of Immort Alley, but this room was where Harry Potter was born. Look past the deeds committed here, look past all that one would look first towards. Learn to see the songs the walls sing, learn to hear the hues of their history, and this moment will be brightest of all, brighter than the Seven Stars and the Seven Skies and the lands that slumber beneath them. A moment, stretching out towards an endlessness that is both transient and eternal, a moment inked deep within the annals of history, this moment that is the story of a revolution and the forging of an ascending god.

Pages upon pages, oh you-who-read-these-histories, tomes upon tomes could be written, all to lead to this single, perfect moment – rooms and halls filled with words, of which this tale is but a charred fragment, a paper recovered from the things lost in the fire and treasured in the remembrance.

A man could search his lifetime for a moment such as this and find perhaps one; to find another person who creates such moments could take longer than all the ages yet gone by.

X…X

Present Day

Hermione Granger sat at a windowsill, her forehead pressed against the glass as she peered out into the night sky. Her husband – though not yet formally – came up and sat behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"What are you doing?" he asked, gently nuzzling her hair, and she giggled.

"I saw a shooting star." She replied. "So I decided to make a wish."

The man froze, before moving his chin to her shoulder. "What do you wish for, Hermione?" he murmured in her ear.

An observer familiar with Harry Potter's expressions would at this moment run far, far away, for his eyes now glittered as they did only when any disaffected individual performed some reprehensible act that succeeded in lowering Hermione Granger's mood to below sheer fucking bliss.

"Do you want the stars, my love?" he asked softly, caressing her face. "I will bring them down and scatter them among your feet, so you will never walk in the dark again.

Do you want the sun and the moon, love? I will seize them and set them about your neck, so that when you smile, the world may see how dim they truly are."

She grinned, leaning against his chest. "What would I do with the stars, Harry, or with the sun?" she teased, then sighed. "No, it's just… it will be over soon, won't it?"

"A month at the most, love. Closer, perhaps, to a fortnight."

She smiled slightly. "Afterwards, we can go to a nice sunny island. It'll be lovely, just the two of us on sandy beaches – and Alhainen, of course."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're rather fond of her, for someone who yelled at me for an hour straight when I gave her to you as a birthday gift." He observed.

She blushed in embarrassment, covering her face with her hands. "I was fifteen!" She moaned. "When are you going to let me forget about that incident?"

He chuckled, the distant lights of the Hogwarts School of Magic twinkling below them. "Never, my love."

X…X

Just a warning – if you plan to leave a review roasting the Winter Lord's choice of subject matter or the scenes the Winter Lord has included, do not bother, because the Winter Lord plans on ignoring it.

Not bad for a first Dark!Harry fic, feels the Winter Lord.

Read, Review and Honky-Tonk,

W.L.