Verus Malum

Verus Malum

Chapter Two

The pain was unendurable. A thousand hot knives were driving into his skin, tearing, ripping, gouging. And he couldn't scream, he couldn't do anything. Harry saw the worst moments of his life flash before him; his parents' deaths, Sirius being nearly Kissed, Lupin undergoing the pain of a werewolf transformation, endless days of slavery with the Dursleys...

And suddenly it all stopped. The pain. The visions. The intolerable experience was over as if it had never happened.

Harry opened his eyes, fearing what he might see. To his surprise, he was still lying on his bed. The thrice-damned Everto Suscitatio was lying on his Gryffindor duvet, no evidence of any demonic activity surrounding it. Despite this apparent normalcy, something was wrong. Harry couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something was definitely amiss. He made to light his wand, but found his arm wouldn't move.

"Worked it out yet, Harry?" said a voice in his ear. Harry tried to turn his head and see where it came from, but his neck wouldn't obey him. "I can see your thoughts you know, while you're trying to make sense of it all... why, that was certainly quick Harry; you came to the correct conclusion in record time! You have been possessed by a demon. By me, to be precise. How was the possession? Did it hurt?"

The whispery voice took on a mocking quality, sending anger up Harry's spine. He could think and feel emotion, but apparently couldn't do much else. He had become something akin to a spectator in his own body.

"What does it feel like, Harry? Your body is in excellent condition, you know. You play that Quidditch sport no doubt. Oh yes, don't seem so surprised. I can access your surface memories with ease, especially the ones you were thinking about recently..."

Harry felt a pang of fear where his stomach had used to be. This creature could read him like an open book. He was trapped in his own mind, unable to do anything about it. Then he had an idea. If the demon could speak to him mentally, could he do the same?

"Oh yes Harry, you can talk to me. Try it. Think something as though you are about to say it."

"Fuck you," Harry thought bitterly. That pretty much summed up his feelings for Asmodeus at that point.

"Language, Harry! I think you'll soon learn to respect my authority, once I've given out some discipline. How about starting now?"

Before Harry could register what the demon had said in its insidious tones, the pain returned. It was overbearing, eternal. Seconds stretched out to days as Harry lay there, wracked with unbearable agony. And he couldn't move a muscle. He couldn't scream. There was no release from the pain until the demon willed it.

And, for the second time, it stopped abruptly. The demon chuckled, the sound a perverse parody of real laughter. Harry's consciousness was reeling, trying to take it all in. He was in a hopeless position. An otherworldly entity had complete control of his body and memories and could do with it what it willed. And that was seemingly the best case scenario.

"That's it Harry, I thrive off of your despair you know... akin to those creatures you call Dementors..." Harry tried to flinch at the mention of those awful beings, but he just couldn't make his body perform the movement. It was as though his brain sent the message but it got waylaid on the way to his muscles.

Sensing his distress, the demon laughed again. Then Harry's arms raised and waved about. The creature was playing with him, exerting his control in the cruellest possible ways. Harry picked his nose, hit himself in the face, and sat up and down mechanically. And all his consciousness could do was watch. Then Asmodeus stopped moving his limbs and began to lecture him again.

"But enough of these games, Harry. I am going to assimilate your memories and knowledge presently. Don't worry; it won't hurt as much as the possession. I would say it is going to be like breaking your legs as opposed to having them ripped off. Now, let's start with basic knowledge and move from there."

The demon's brooding presence faded slightly and Harry began to feel an uncomfortable probing experience in the base of his skull. The feeling wasn't painful, just... alien, like a dentist's fingers in his mouth or a doctor's instrument in his ear.

Then the feeling blossomed into agony once more. Harry saw visions flicker before his mind's eye; how to walk, talk, smile, breathe, eat. His mannerisms and methods of speech. The demon was starting from the ground up, learning to be convincingly human.

And it hurt.

Harry fought the pain with every fibre of his being, trying to drive it back down to a dull throb. As he locked in mental conflict with Asmodeus, he noticed through the haze that his previously limp right hand was shaking slightly. It couldn't be the demon; absorbed as it was in reading Harry's recollections... it seemed to be a sign of the demon's control slipping as it was distracted. Driven by purpose, Harry focused through the torture of the assimilation onto his hand. It was shaking like mad, the wand clenched in it little more then a blur. Asmodeus noticed nothing, hell bent on taking in Harry's knowledge.

Little by little, his whole arm began to move from the duvet, slowly pointing the wand towards Harry's forehead. However, when the wand was pointing directly at Harry's head, the demon in his mind sensed something was wrong. It paused from what it was doing and lashed out with brutal force, battering Harry's psyche and locking his limbs in position.

But the wand was still pointing at Harry's face. In its haste, Asmodeus hadn't registered the movement.

Harry's consciousness tried to recover from the mental assault as the demon's focus turned from general knowledge onto names and locations. The pain had returned, accompanied by words and pictures playing across his vision, but Harry crushed it with savage force. He was incensed that this creature was toying with him. And he had finally formed a plan to hinder it.

He needed to forget as much as he could; giving a demon access to his innermost thoughts wasn't high on Harry's to-do list. Everything was in place: Asmodeus was distracted, Harry's wand was pointed at his face. The Memory Charm was a notoriously difficult piece of magic, but Harry was getting desperate. If he went wrong, he could easily erase his mind. He could end up like Lockhart, drooling in St. Mungo's. But it was a small price to pay to stop the malevolent entity.

He began to focus on causing his body to obey him once more. Again, Asmodeus didn't immediately register any wrongdoings, assuming Harry would be kept docile from the savage attack.

Harry's lips began to move, to form a word. A ringing began to resound in his ears. He struggled to speak, almost choking the word out. Asmodeus realised what was going on. But it was too late. Harry mustered all his mental energy, funnelling it into the word.

"Obliviate!" he whispered, sending a silvery-grey jet of light directly into his face. The pain exploded into life once more, then everything went black.

Ron Weasley woke slowly, savouring the last moments of sleep. It was the weekend, and that meant he could have a lie-in, something which he looked forward to every week. No one else in the dormitory seemed to be awake, which was definitely a good thing in his book; no one to disturb his rest.

He dozed, reminiscing about the Quidditch World Cup. That had been one of the best moments of his life, if he ignored the Death Eater attack immediately after. Which he generally did when replaying the game in his mind.

After a few minutes spent thinking along this vein, Ron decided it was high time he got up. He wanted to talk to Harry and Hermione about the possibility of them entering the Triwizard Tournament on Halloween; he was sure Hermione would be able to figure out a way to fox the mystery judge, all he had to do was convince her to help...

With that final muse, he rose from his four-poster, intent on waking Harry and going to breakfast. But as he crossed the room in his paisley pyjamas, yawning, he noticed Harry's curtains were abnormally still. He reached out a hand, meaning to pull them open, but found they wouldn't move. It was as if the velvet had turned to iron, solid and implacable under his touch. He thought about just leaving Harry, who obviously didn't want to be disturbed, and going to breakfast alone, but the curtains promptly opened to reveal a tired and rumpled Harry. His red pyjamas looked... scorched, and his hair was blown back. And his expression was one of bewilderment as he looked up at an astonished Ron.

"Umm... Harry? I was just wondering if you fancied grabbing some breakfast, mate..." Harry looked blankly up at him, creeping Ron out slightly. "Harry? It's me, Ron? You know, your best friend? Are you alright?"

This seemed to snap Harry out of his state, as recognition dawned in his previously-blank eyes.

"Uh, morning Ron! Of course I'll go to breakfast with you, just give me a moment to get ready..." the words were spoken unevenly and with superfluous mouth movements, as if Harry wasn't used to human speech.

"Are you sure you're alright, mate? You sound a bit... off..."

"I'm perfectly alright, Ron, don't you worry! I'll just be a moment getting ready, you go shower or something."

This time his speech sounded and looked more normal, as though he was getting used to the movements needed. Ron gave Harry one last look, before shrugging and slouching off to the shower block. Hermione would be able to tell him if anything was wrong with Harry, he was too tired to play detective.

Asmodeus cursed inwardly. Harry had done a great deal of damage with that spell, making the demon's knowledge of names and places very suspect. He would have to try and blend in more effectively; it wouldn't do for the mortals to discover him.

Yet.

He paused for a moment before getting up, to check whether Harry's consciousness was still disabled. He had caused the meddler a great deal of pain before finishing the assimilation; the spell had, after all, set his plans for mischief back a great deal. Asmodeus rose from the four-poster, quickly stuffing the Everto Suscitatio under the bed before giving the dormitory a once over. Personal possessions on the tables belonging to the other three, sleeping, occupants of the dorm told him their names, allowing Harry's memories to fill in details of their character in a rush of information.

It seemed that all he had to do was learn the name of something and he would recall facts about them; age, appearance, Harry's relationship with them, their favourite subjects. The demon smiled a smile that looked out of place on Harry's teenage features; one that spoke of a millennia of experience that was about to be put to use. With one last look around the room he began to busy himself with getting ready. Breakfast beckoned...