Irredeemable

Death Eaters were circled around the large rock formation, heads bowed in obedience and black cloaks seeming to disappear into the darkness of the night behind them. They blocked out the few stars with their forms, making the world seem at once much larger and much smaller.

In the center Voldemort stood upright, tall and proud. His serpentine features held a lazy, condescending smirk of utter triumph and his eyes were wide, crimson irises flashing in the light from the fire beneath him.

Harry shivered partially from the cold but mostly from the sinking realisation that he was actually about to betray all that he held dear. For nearly a month he had lived in Voldemort's stronghold, depended upon the man for food and clothing. He had not dared to rebel outright against the Dark Lord, but he made sure that his displeasure was shown.

Now, however, that was all to change. Voldemort was no longer content with a half-obedient, half-stubborn boy still clinging to the last vestments of hope that his former friends would come to his rescue. He wanted a willing servant ready to obey his slightest command, even if it meant the destruction of all that Harry was.

And, knowing Voldemort, he would likely receive exactly what he wanted.

He rubbed his bare arms and shuffled his bare feet in the thin covering of snow, half-hoping that Voldemort would hurry up and destroy him. Draco stood behind him, almost uncomfortably close. The other boy confused him with his sly grins and sidelong glances. At first, Harry could have sworn that the blonde was working solely on his master's orders, but now he was left puzzled.

Draco seemed to genuinely want to... Harry blushed at what Draco had done to him, what he had responded to. He clenched his eyes tightly shut. His pulse was erratic and sharp, the blood beating in his ears and refusing to allow him to relax.

He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself some other way. His breaths were shaky and shallow, barely granting his lungs enough oxygen.

"Tonight is the night!" Voldemort shouted above the light gusts of wind, seeming to look everywhere at once. Harry opened his eyes and focused on his... master.

"Tonight, the idol of the Wizarding world will fall! All hope shall be lost and despair shall once again fill this land!" His eyes glowed with an ethereal, uncouth light. "As the moon rises, almost full, so shall the power of the Dark!"

Deep-throated cheers arose from the scores of Death Eaters. Harry winced at the sound, a powerful reminder of where he was and what he was about to do. "Harry Potter, come forth!" Slowly, dragging his feet, he stumbled towards the Dark Lord, trying in vain to maintain his calm.

"Harry Potter," he intoned solemnly, thin lips peeled back in a ruthless, insidious smirk, "tonight you shall truly become one with the Darkness inside of you!"

"I am pure," Harry muttered feebly, snatching at memories of being a Gryffindor, of being bold and courageous and chivalrous, but oh so ignorant and idiotic. "There is no darkness inside of me."

"Light casts shadows," the Dark Lord proclaimed cryptically, studying Harry's face intently.

"I won't do this!" he cried out, sounding like a petulant child. In the back of his mind, he was reminded of Dudley throwing one of his tantrums. Dudley, though, had never been in a fight for his very soul. "I agreed to not fight you! Why can't that be enough?"

"Because we are at the crossroads! This is no pitiful mortal battle! The outcome of this war will decide far more than just which House wins the championship. No one can sit on the sidelines, especially you. Dumbledore merely turned you into a tool, to be tossed aside when you began to rust. You have no other option."

"I don't even know any Dark magic!" he argued, one final, desperate plea. "And you can' t force me to do it!"

"I won't have to force you," Voldemort hissed mysteriously, "for you will do this all of your own free will."

"I won't go about torturing Muggles and Muggle-borns. It's inhumane."

"In time, you will. But for tonight, there is another task you will complete."

Voldemort motioned forth with one skeletal hand, and a bound figure was brought forward. Surprisingly, the woman did not struggle against her bonds, instead gazing at Harry with almost disconcerting calm and acceptance.

"Lestrange!" he spat, pinning the cold woman with a glare that rivaled Voldemort's.

"She killed your godfather, didn't she, Harry? Pushed him back into that veil. She cost you the one person who ever truly cared about you..." He trailed off, leaving the rest for Harry to conclude.

"She did so on your orders! Sirius would never have died if it weren't for you!" His eyes blazed brightly with fury before dimming at the depressing memories that replayed before him.

"I gave no orders regarding Sirius Black. What she did she did on her own initiative. But you now have a chance to correct that."

"Nothing could bring Sirius back from the dead!" he screamed, knowing that if he were to look in the Mirror of Erised, Sirius' prematurely aged face would be the only thing he would see.

"But you can seek vengeance." Voldemort's voice was a mere whispering insinuation. "You could make her pay..."

"Avenge his death..." Harry murmured, eyes fixed on Bellatrix in an almost trance-like state.

"Make her feel the pain that he felt, that you felt. Make her suffer.

"Yes, yes..."

Voldemort nodded to Draco who drew a wand out of a deep pocket of his robe and handed it silently to the shorter boy. Harry accepted it slowly, never removing his eyes from the bound woman before him.

"She deserves to be tortured, to feel the pain of her very flesh being ripped apart. To have her intestines pulled from her body and to watch as her beating heart slowly dies," Voldemort reminded him, eyes wide with anticipation.

"She deserves much worse than that!" Harry growled, raising the bough of Holly high above his head. "CRUCIO!"

The shrieks of the woman filled the air. She ripped at her clothes in the pain, the slightest whisper of fabric against her rough skin tripling the sheer agony of the curse. After a few minutes she lay panting in the snow, completely nude. Her body glistened with sweat and blood trickled out of her nose and ears.

"You whore!" he shrieked, still not letting up on the curse. "You goddamn dirty slut!" Her screams rose in pitch and volume, shattering the still, dark beauty of the night and warping the loveliness of the stars shining down on the white snow.

Even though Harry took no notice, the Death Eaters regarded him silently from behind their blank masks, silently cheering to see the mere woman who had reached a position that none of them could nope to attain. The smarter ones were reminded that if even the Lord's favourite could be permitted to be tortured by one not her master, they themselves were much more vulnerable.

Through it all Voldemort steepled his fingers and studied his newest servant with a lazy smirk across his face. He listened to the cries of the woman with half-lidded eyes, reveling in his sadistic pleasure.

"Feel the power, Harry," he whispered urgently, egging the teenager on. "It's a rush, isn't it, this strange and wonderful feeling? You hold life in your hands; it is yours to protect or utterly destroy. Tonight, you are a god, choosing the fates of mortals. They are beneath you, mere puppets whose sole purpose is your entertainment."

Harry turned towards the Dark wizard, mouth wide in a truly evil, frightening grin. His eyes were wide and his cheeks flushed deeply from the heady feeling flowing through him. He appeared as a twisted phantasm of his former self, a dark shade snatching away the body of the pure Gryffindor and leaving in his place a deadly demon.

His hold on the Cruciatus Curse never wavered.

"Can you feel the pain?" Harry demanded of his victim. "This is what you did to Sirius! He was your own relative, and you bloody killed him! You deserve so much worse than this. Your entire line should be cursed. For eternity you shall rot in Hell. When the flesh is stripped slowly from your bones from the drops of acids that pour down upon you and your soul is tattered and bruised, when your torturous existence is worse than Lucifer himself could possibly devise, only then could you possibly begin to atone for even a fraction of your sin."

"But it will never be enough. You killed my godfather! You took away the only one who ever loved me! I hate you!" Voldemort watched with narrowed eyes as Lestrange spasmed into the air, her spinal cord cracking from the pressure it was under. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell limply to the snow covered ground.

The snow around her was soon immersed in crimson, a dark patch of her sins against the pure white of the snow. If Harry had been thinking straight, he probably would have found it highly symbolic.

"I hate you!" he roared, leaping for the dead woman. "Why'd you have to die! You should suffer more! You should spend eternity never dying, constantly being tortured for your transgressions!"

He fell upon her, beating her inert chest with his frail fists. Bruises appeared on her naked body, and blood spurted out of her mouth, already half divided into plasma and water.

Harry let out a short, shuttering breath, tears falling freely down onto the motionless corpse. He sat, wailing and sobbing, crystal tears streaking down his cheeks and mixing with the blood. The Dark Mark blazed black on his left forearm.

A few of the Death Eaters snickered in disgust at the weakness the boy was showing. Voldemort merely glared at them and they cowered in fear. "You will respect your new master!" he growled.

"I am not going to serve some idiotic boy!" Lucius declared, voice haughty and dripping with the type of disdain only managed by those with an impeccable pedigree.

"Do you question my orders?" Voldemort demanded.

"N... no my lord!" Lucius denied, instantly transforming from a snobby aristocrat to a mewling servant.

"It is good for you that you do not, Lucius," the Dark Lord cautioned softly, "for I would hate to think that one of my most loyal had betrayed me."

"Most certainly not! I serve you, my lord. I will do anything you say!"

"And I thought you were above such base behavior. You disappoint me Lucius."

"My lord, I only want to serve y-" His pleas were cut off with rough, low screams that were torn from his throat as the Cruciatus curse hit him. Voldemort maintained the curse just long enough for the man to be gasping for air and clawing at his robes, begging for mercy.

"Harry Potter is one of us now." He paused for a moment to let the threat sink in properly. "Any insults against him will be considered an insult against me." The assembled Death Eaters did not respond, the only sounds heard were the moaning of Harry and the muffled groans of Lucius as he tried to regain some control.

Their mood was tetchy and Voldemort noticed this with narrowed eyes, remarking sharply," Is that clear?"

The night was filled with muttered "yes masters" and Voldemort nodded, satisfied.

Draco reached out a faltering hand towards Harry, amazed at the depths of emotions displayed in those brilliant emerald eyes of his. There was such pain and the ultimate suffering.

With halting steps he walked woodenly forward until he was behind the smaller boy. Hesitantly, he laid a comforting hand on his shoulders, relaxing his stiff shoulders when Harry did not flinch away.

"It's alright, Harry," he comforted almost silently. "His death has been avenged."

Harry turned to look up at him with red eyes, tear tracks evident against his pale face. "It won't be avenged, not until Dumbledore lies dead at my feet." Harry stood, shaking slightly from his exertion.

Voldemort heard the boy's words and laughed. The high pitched grating sound reached the ears of the gods and they themselves shuddered in fear, knowing that their hopes had just been extinguished and the light that was the Boy-Who-Lived was no more.

The small group rushed into a clearing in the midst of the Forbidden Forest, noting that the three pairs of fleeing footsteps appeared to vanish mid-step. Ron cursed loudly and no one could find the heart to berate him for his crass vulgarity.

Dumbledore leaned against a gray, mossy tree trunk slowly, forehead creased and blue eyes heavy with disappointment. He clutched his wand tightly in one hand, knuckles white on the polished, worn wood grip. He panted slightly from the effort of running, all too aware that he was far too old for this business.

McGonagall's lips were pressed in their customary thin line and her eyes were narrowed and half-lidded. She too drew several shaky breaths and steadied herself by placing one trembling hand against the rough bark of a giant pine, barely even feeling the sharp prickles against her fingertips. Her hat was askew, hanging off of her tight gray bun and she looked distinctly displeased.

Snape was the only one who was at all collected, and even he was grimacing slightly. He slid each arm up the copious sleeve of the opposite limb and sneered lightly at the spot where three sets of footprints disappeared.

Ron's face was flushed to match his hair. He continually clenched and unclenched his fists, muttering explicatives under his breath, cursing Dark wizards in general and Harry in particular. The head boy's eyes were dark with fury and lingering hatred as he too studied the footprints minutely.

Hermione stared at nothing in particular, mouth moving silently and eyes unfocused. Leaves and twigs were tangled in her curly hair but she took no notice of them or the slight cut that dripped blood on her right cheek.

"They're gone!" she wailed, whirling around and beating open hands against a tree trunk.

"Too bad they didn't splinch themselves," Ron muttered, a faint note of longing in his voice.

"We must prepare the students and the castle at once," Dumbledore informed them gravely. "Voldemort's attack will come swiftly and without warning."

"What about the first years?" McGonagall asked in a worried tone. "Surely they will not be expected to fight?"

"No, but the may have to."

"Headmaster," Snape commented darkly, "those students can barely manage a Wingardium Leviosa properly and you are about to pit them against Death Eaters? A simple hovering charm has no practical battle applications."

"I used it against the troll!" Ron contradicted fervently.

"That, Mr. Weasley," Snape sneered, "was more a matter of luck than anything else. And the majority of the Death Eaters are neither as inane nor as lethargic as a Mountain Troll."

"Plans have already been made for events just like this. The younger years will be gathered together in as safe a location as we can offer them. They will not fight unless, of course, the fight is brought to them."

"We're just going to bunch them all together? Professor Dumbledore, that's like inviting the wolves to the slaughter of the lambs!" Hermione's voice had a half-pleading, half-unbelieving note to it that caused Dumbledore to sigh sadly, though a hard glint was in his eye.

"Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice a few for the sake of many."

"You're using them as bait?" Ron screeched, cerulean eyes widening in shock. "You're using them to distract the Death Eaters so that the Order can sneak behind them and pick them off?"

"They are not bait, Mr. Weasley. The Death Eaters will come to the school whatever we do with the younger years. And we are gathering them together in one secure location for their own protection. The Death Eaters will not know where it is. If by chance they happen to stumble upon it, at that point the castle may be lost to us anyway."

"What about the elder students?" McGonagall queried. "They have been without a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for two years. How can we expect them to be able to fight alongside the professors?"

"They're going to have to," Dumbledore said firmly, meeting McGonagall's gaze squarely. "This is a war. We have no more time for innocence or ignorance. Now is a time for hard words and harder measures. The Death Eaters will show us no leniency, so we must expect none. That would be naive and foolhardy."

"Why now? Why us? Why Harry? Why did any of this happen? We're just a bunch of kids and here we are about t face down the largest evil ever gathered."

"Choices were made, Ms. Granger, some of them honourable and others of them deplorable. It is those choices that took us to where we are today. Harry has chosen his path."

"Then why did you keep him here? Why didn't you just kill him? Voldemort would have been weakened without the aid of his top lieutenant."

"Mr. Weasley, while you may be a member of the Order of the Phoenix, do not presume to know everything."

Ron's eyes flashed and he trembled with rage. "Why the bloody hell should you keep him alive? After all he's done he deserves to die."

"Because we need him, foolish boy!" Snape spat sinisterly.

"Severus, do not say anymore!" Dumbledore warned, a hard glint in his blue eyes. "Suffice it to say, Mr. Weasley, that Mr. Potter still has a role to play, one that it would be rather impossible for him to fulfill were he six feet below."

"This isn't some bloody play!"

"Mr. Weasley, Ms. Granger, if you can not keep yourselves silent about what has transpired here tonight than it may be necessary to Oblivaite you." Snape came as close as he ever could to a grin at the pleasure that action would bring him.

"You can't do that! That's illegal!" Ron protested.

"Professor Snape has overstepped his bounds," Dumbledore responded with a pointed glare at his potions master. "But his point is certainly valid. The two of you can not be allowed to spread what you have seen tonight and in the past few days. The students must be told of the upcoming attack so that they do not panic, but it would not do for you to spread rumors. Even without your assistance, I'm sure half of the castle is already saying that there was a hoard of death Eaters here trying to steal away our House Elves or some other such nonsense."

"Memory charms, Mr. Weasley, do not always cover up problems, as you yourself should know very well from your second year," McGonagall scolded.

"You should have just Obliviated Potter," Ron remarked, disgust lingering in his tone so that he nearly spat out the words. "If you could not kill him for Merlin knows what reason you could at least have made him less of a bastard."

"We will go back to the school," Professor Dumbledore instructed, ignoring Ron's comment. "Nothing should be said of what transpired here tonight. In the morning the students shall be told of the situation and preparations will be made"

The small group headed back to the castle with heavy hearts. Ron and Hermione hung back slightly, Hermione clinging to her boyfriend's arms as silent tears streaked down her face.

"How did it come to this? Even in fifth year there was always hope, always Harry there to save the day. Now we have nothing: no hope, no saviour, no plans, no dumb luck."

"It's all because of Potter," Ron said tersely, eyes straight ahead and unblinking.

"But this isn't how it works in the stories! There should always be some hope, however slight. Harry should be redeemed and brought back to us. Voldemort should fall and the people who otherwise should have been slaughtered should spend their days to the end in peace and celebration."

Ron whirled around, pinning Hermione to a tree behind him with his arms on either side of her head. "You don't understand; you're a Muggleborn."

"I understand perfectly well, Ronald Weasley, and my birth has nothing-"

"It has everything to do with this! You didn't grow up in the Wizarding world. You didn't have to experience the fear. For years after the initial fervor of wild partying had died down people remained wary. I can't remember meeting anyone who was not a family member until I was nearly five years old. You never saw a full grown wizard or witch without their wand, and most of those still in Hogwarts had them too."

"I know this, Ron, I read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."

"But you didn't live it! You couldn't possibly understand the mind set of the people at the time, the panic every time any slight reference was made to You-Know-Who. For a long time he was not even referred to as You-Know-Who, but only by him. Did you ever wander why there are so few younger years compared to those in our year? It took six years, Hermione, six years! for people to begin to believe that their children wouldn't grow up to be tortured or killed or made into slaves."

Ron paused for a moment, breathing heavily. "Even if we do manage to win, that same thing will happen again. If by some miracle You-Know-Who is killed then things won't just immediately be fine and normal."

"It doesn't have to be like that, Ron!" Hermione argued, though her voice was weak and her eyes glazed over slightly in fear.

"But it will, Hermione! The Wizarding community grew lax after their first war, allowed themselves to grow soft. They won't let it happen again. We made the same mistake the Muggles did after W.W.I, allowing ourselves to grown complacent and content."

"We can win this, Ron! You must believe that, otherwise we've already lost."

"Then we have lost," he growled, lowering his arms and stalking out of the Forest.

Hermione sank slowly to the mossy ground, not even feeling the cold snow. "Why, Harry, why?"

The trees offered up no answer, staying silent and regal as they always were.

"This isn't supposed to happen!" she screamed to no one in particular. "We shouldn't have to live through this! It's not right, not right!"

But you do, the wind whispered as it tossed stray bits of her hair into her tear-soaked face. You have to live in these times.

"If they win, it means more than just the lives of the soldiers. All the Muggles and Muggleborns will be killed. I'll be killed. Blood shouldn't mean this much, shouldn't be so important."

But that is the way it is, the breezes told her silently, and you can not change the world.

"I can try!" she protested, though her argument was weak and not heartfelt.

All you can decide is how you will live in these dark times. You can not make the decisions for others; the only fate you control is your own.

"But my decisions can affect others," Hermione stated, drawing herself unsteadily to her feet. "But then, who am I to hold the fate of the world in my hands?"

You are no one, which is why you do not carry the future. That position rests with others.

"Others like who? Like Harry?" Her voice was caustic and rough, disbelieving and scornful.

He is one, yes.

"Well you did a great job of picking him," she muttered sarcastically.

He had no choice in the matter, just as you have no real impact on what is to come.

"Are you trying to tell me that my life is worthless? If I hadn't been here, Harry would never have been able to do half the things he did!"

A way would have been provided, as it is for all those who are central to the future. You were merely an accessory who has outlived your usefulness.

"I'm not going to just sit by and let things happen as they will! That's inane and pointless! No stupid voices in my head are going to tell me that I have no control over my own future. I'll make my own choices and decisions, thank you very much."

The winds just smiled, though all Hermione felt was a brief flash of mirth.

"Nothing to say, have you? I should never have listened to you in the first place. My life is mine and I will make of it what I will!"

She stormed off to the castle with renewed vehemence, cursing fate and destiny.

The winds smiled, glad that they had accomplished their task, before moving on to other goals.