taking control

Prologue

He spent those days in bed drifting in and out of sleep. To be honest, Harry couldn't really tell the difference between his sleeping and waking hours for he continuously relived the same moments within his mind regardless of his state. Harry had become rather adept at avoiding and eluding his enemies. (He had been doing it since he was a baby when Voldemort first targeted him.) His years of practice could not help him this time though, for Harry Potter had become his own worst enemy, for the moment anyway. He did still have the darkest wizard of the century plotting his death.

Harry could not escape the mental images of that dreadful night when he dragged five of his closest friends from their school in Scotland to the Ministry of Magic in London into certain danger on a harebrained scheme to rescue his godfather from the clutches of Lord Voldemort. What Harry had not known at the time was that he was being duped by Voldemort; Sirius, his godfather, was actually safe and sound in his London home at the time. The ensuing disaster led to injury for all five of his friends plus several Order of the Phoenix members who had come to their rescue and worst of all, the death of his godfather, who had been a part of the rescue team.

The moment Harry relived most often in his mind was watching as his godfather fell through that accursed veil. This moment brought a mix of emotions through Harry: pain and grief at the loss of the closest thing to a father he had ever known, anger at his murderer, Sirius' own cousin Bellatrix Lestrange, anger at Sirius for not taking the duel seriously (if only he had attacked her rather than wasting time taunting her), helplessness as he could do nothing but watch as Sirius tumbled through the archway, and confusion as to what the bloody hell that veil was exactly.

Remus Lupin, Harry's only remaining connection to his long deceased parents, had held Harry back from following Sirius through the archway explaining that Sirius was gone and would not be coming back. Everyone he had talked to since then only reiterated this fact, yet Harry didn't understand how it worked. If the arch was a doorway to the world of the dead, shouldn't it work both ways? It wasn't as though Sirius had died properly, leaving behind his body while his spirit moved on to its next adventure. No, Sirius still had his body with him, and as far as Harry was concerned, that should mean that there was still hope that he could come back. Hope was all he had at this point.

When Harry wasn't brooding over his godfather's state, he was reliving the rest of the events of that evening. After the shock of Sirius' tumble through the veil, Harry had raced after Bellatrix and cast the worst curse he could think of on her: the Cruciatus Curse. It was this act more than anything else that stole Harry's appetite away. The thought of what he had done made him physically ill. He had cast an Unforgivable Curse. Not only that, he'd cast the worst Unforgivable in his mind. He wasn't looking for control or a quick death for Bellatrix; he wanted to inflict pain, to make Bellatrix suffer as he was suffering at the time, as he was still currently suffering. She had mocked him for his effort, for the curse did not work properly. He had learned the hard way that when casting the curse you had to actually enjoy causing others pain. If you didn't enjoy causing others pain you were only left with a feeling a self-loathing. Casting that curse had made Harry feel as though he was no better than Voldemort himself.

It was that feeling that had left Harry completely powerless when Voldemort confronted Harry that night and had allowed Voldemort to possess Harry and gain control over his body. Harry still shivered when he thought of that; it left him feeling as if he was dirty, tainted, like he was covered in dirt that would never wash off. His hatred of himself in conjunction with his grief over the loss of Sirius caused Harry to drop his guard and welcome death's sweet release. Had it not been for Albus Dumbledore's impeccable timing, Harry would have been reunited with his parents and godfather in the afterlife that night. Being in the Headmaster's debt was not somewhere Harry wanted to be at the moment.