Chapter Text
The human body contains just under five litres of blood. Did that seem like more than he thought or less?
He wasn’t sure as he watched blood drip in a steady track down the man’s throat towards the wet gravel under him, thickly smoothing over his prominent Adam’s apple.
Harry felt the blood that had initially spurted from the man’s throat cool and harden on his face and neck, tightening and imprinting itself on his skin. A look at his hands showed the same thing and small flecks fell once he flexed his knuckles, his joints popping with the movement.
The man withstood a lot, only falling once Harry had delivered that final blow, slicing his neck in a clean line, his jugular bursting at the seams, unable to pump said five litres anymore.
Harry watched as the wound clotted and the blood stopped dripping, instead gathering in clumps along his neck- a fruitless endeavour to save the body.
He thought long and hard about who the man once was. Blond hair—straight at the roots, soft waves at the ends. Ordinary brown eyes. Straight white teeth, except for faint yellowing around the canines. The codex of his mind whirred, its pages flipping furiously until it abruptly stopped.
Corban Yaxley.
He was a fickle one. He had slipped from the Auror’s clutch multiple times, often gone so fast that the department hadn’t noticed until he was already hidden in the streets of Muggle London- safe from their loose grasp.
It was funny how the death eaters ran to the place they feared most, searching for solace in the land they believed was full of monstrosities and low-lives.
And here he was, finally exterminated behind an innocuous pub in Camden, no one to save him, no one to mourn him. Just Harry to watch him in his final moments, relishing in it.
He was surprisingly easy to locate. A few drops of blood from his illegitimate daughter had done the trick. She was a sweet kid with an innocence that made her far too trusting. When he approached her at the playground, offering a wooden toy with an edge he’d carefully shaved sharp, she took it without hesitation. One small cut later, a whispered apology and a bandage were all it took to send her happily on her way.
Blood tracing spells were dark but had the Ministry gotten off their high horse and considered it, Yaxley would’ve been found and carted off to Azkaban within the day.
It was interesting to think about ‘light’ and ‘dark’ magic nowadays- the more Harry learned, the more blurred the lines between the two became.
The cacophony of shouting voices, blaring car horns, and splashing water jolted Harry back to the present, if only for a fleeting moment. It was nearly impossible to remain grounded when dark magic surged through his veins, electrifying every nerve ending and amplifying every sensation until his limbs tingled and his thoughts blurred into a haze.
He’d experimented with drugs before—both magical and Muggle—but nothing compared to this. Dark magic was the ultimate addiction, a high that eclipsed every other. Harry knew he’d do anything for another taste of its intoxicating sweetness—even murder.
Harry grabbed Yaxley’s wand and pocketed it before using his own wand to levitate and disillusion the body. He grabbed ahold of the man’s cold and rigid arm and apparated away with a large crack, a sound that had likely gotten lost in the maelstrom of the city anyways.
He landed on a cliffside, somewhere off the coast of Scotland by the looks of it. It was funny how much effort he put into finding his victims yet he didn’t plan this part of the day out at all, usually just picking something vague in his mind and hoping for the best. It would seem Merlin was on his side today as he gazed out in the distance, towards the horizon where deep torrential blue water met a rapidly darkening sky.
The rain from Camden hadn’t quite reached Scotland but the billowing grey clouds were thick with the promise of it and it would seem that it would soon come. Harry stepped back from the edge of the cliff he’d landed on, a little to the left and he would have fallen right off the edge. It would have been unfortunate to meet such a demise but he was so out of it, it wouldn’t really even matter so long as his veins were still electrified.
The ground under him was soft and malleable, the grass so saturated that it seemed a shame to drop Yaxley’s body here- a spot of ugly within a blooming meadow.
Harry whistled a little tune he’d heard on the wireless this morning, chipper, as he’d dropped Yaxley’s body right in the centre of the clearing. There was nobody around for what seemed like miles which was good- there were no witnesses he’d have to obliviate.
He then pulled out Yaxley’s wand and cast a spell that sent little red sparks into the sky and notified the Auror department that someone was in danger. Unfortunately for Yaxley, the danger had passed, Harry just needed someone to take the body away.
And with that, he snapped his wand in half, pocketed it again, and left before anyone had even seen him.
______
He landed back in the sitting room at Grimmauld with a contented sigh, stretching out his neck that had become tight in the duel with Yaxley. He had managed to catch Harry with a nasty hex to the arm and he was only now able to feel it with the initial height of the interaction slowly depleting.
He walked over to the kitchen, the click of his dragonhide leather boots harsh in the otherwise silent home.
A click and the kettle was on, the water heating up and bubbling rapidly while he grabbed a mug and teabag from adjacent cupboards.
He set them all up in a neat line before casting a stasis spell on it all and then leaving, walking out of the kitchen and upstairs towards his room- a guest room in the West wing of the Grimmauld.
He’d spent many nights in Sirius’ room, practically claiming it as his own but the night after the war ended, he’d slept in Regulus’ room and now, he was in an unclaimed room- no identifying features, no leftover furniture or mementos, just a blank slate with which he could rest his head in. It wasn’t as though Grimmauld was known for its’ comforting ambiance anyways.
He stopped just short of his room and opened the door across from it, revealing a narrow closet. Stepping inside, Harry pushed back a false wall, slipping into a hidden room that had likely been intended for storage but now held his most closely guarded secret.
The space was plain and dusty, with shelves lining the walls and a single rickety wooden chair he’d conjured from scraps of attic wood in the centre. It didn’t feel right to buy a whole new chair just for this space.
Harry lowered himself onto the chair, its creak breaking the silence, and drew out the Death Eater’s wand once more. In his other hand he gripped his wand, holly wood and phoenix feather core, not the wand he’d used to kill Yaxley with, the most infamous in Wizarding History- the Elder wand.
He leaned forward, hunched over, and began to etch the name Corban Yaxley across the length of the wand, his first name on one half, and his surname on the other, the only piece of evidence that he had ever existed at all.
The letters were crooked and uneven, jumping up and down the small shaft of the wand but it was done and after running his bloodied thumb over the letters one last time, he placed it on the shelf, right next to Wulfric Mulciber's broken wand.
Mulciber had been so weak and decrepit following the war, their meeting could barely even be considered a duel, though it was enough to satisfy Harry’s cravings, initially .
After the final battle at Hogwarts, when Harry had used the Killing Curse to defeat Voldemort once and for all, he couldn’t bring himself to admit how intoxicating it had felt. As the green light surged from his wand, the spell’s power reverberated back into him, pulsing from his arm to the very core of his magic. Each beat was a thrill he had savoured.
He could feel the spell gouging a jagged wound into his soul, tearing at something essential, but that was nothing compared to the curse’s honeyed allure. The sensation left his head light and silken, a bliss he couldn’t ignore. After the battle, his dizziness and shaky steps were easily explained—he’d just defeated the world’s darkest wizard, after all. That’s what everyone said.
But deep down, Harry knew the truth.
He knew it a week later, when instead of celebrating, he was left shaking on the cold bathroom floor. His skin was ice, his forehead slick with sweat, his stomach twisting violently. He couldn’t stand without feeling like the world would collapse beneath him.
He endured it for days, clawing his way back to something resembling balance. But just as he thought he could breathe again, the newest edition of the Daily Prophet shattered him.
It was a list. A stark, merciless list of escaped Death Eaters and sympathisers. Most had slipped away, unpunished, their crimes unanswered and something inside Harry snapped. A cold, furious wave swept over him, drowning him in a relentless, icy flood.
And that was when it started. His bender. His break.
He tried drugs but it was either not enough or too much- he would spend a night still stuck with his own thoughts or would pass out on the floor of his room, smelling colours and seeing God in a top hat. He’d gone into clubs in the muggle world and kissed and slept with so many men and women, he wasn’t sure he could even picture their faces anymore, all of them swept in the haze of drink and his own madness. He’d even tried underground fighting which helped, for a time but nothing could take him away from the anger and helplessness he felt. It felt like he wasn’t even himself anymore but an amalgamation of the worst years of his life.
One night, months later, he was sitting in the study downstairs, wondering what it was exactly that Orion Black did in there, when he realised he had run out of alcohol, the gleaming decanter empty of his favourite amber liquid. The thought had spiralled as he studied the gleaming engravings on the crystal and he had immediately left and gone straight to the Hog’s Head.
From there he went to Knockturn which could barely even be called that anymore from how the Ministry scrubbed it clean, free from any traces of the shady dealings that had once occurred there. It would likely come back soon and the Ministry would again keep a blind eye to it but for now, there was no information available.
He then made a quick visit to the liquor shop and went back home, if Grimmauld could really even be called that.
In one of Orion’s drawers, he found a spell book on dark magic, pretty standard for this house, but for the first time, Harry actually opened it, feeling salacious despite being completely alone, and he read. He read page after page on how to kill someone slowly, quickly, cleanly, how to mutilate someone to the brink of death but not quite killing them to extend the fun, on and on about the various ways to cause bodily harm to another person.
Harry was engrossed in it as if he was reading a thriller book or perhaps a mystery for the way he eagerly flipped the pages, barely finishing one before hopping to the next, the leather tome moving from the desk to being cradled right in his lap. He didn’t even notice when the sun rose, not until slivers of light crept through the window and pierced his eyes, searing like fire.
Then, near the back, away from all the rest of the information, were other very dark spells but useful ones, in a sense.
It was there that he found the tracking spell he’d used that evening to find Mulciber.
It wasn’t pretty, no dark magic ever was, and Harry had slightly doubted the viability of it at first but he had still sought out Mulciber’s mother, a sad crippled woman who had been abandoned in a muggle asylum.
Harry had gained access to her room under pretence of being her grandson and when it came time to obtain her blood, well, he admittedly felt some hesitation. Was he really about to harm an old woman to find her grandson and eventually do…something? He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do then- just that Mulciber’s name was on that list of escaped death eaters and he wanted to do something about it because what did it matter that Harry took down Voldemort if his followers still ran around rampant?
His saving grace was a nurse who had come in to take her blood for some testing. It turned out that along with the dementia, she had cancer and so when Harry held her hand for ‘support’, he had stayed long enough to swipe a vial when the nurse’s head was turned. He hadn’t visited since.
He’d gone home and cast the spell, immediately feeling a sharp cut from somewhere behind his sternum, but it was accompanied by the familiar wave of relief from the pain he hadn’t even realised he’d been carrying since the war. The dark magic was hurting and healing him all at once.
He’d found Mulciber hiding out in a dilapidated shack in Lithuania.
Harry had apparated there, only needing to stop once, courtesy of the same magical well that had opened in him when he defeated Voldemort.
He had always been told he was destined to be a ‘powerful wizard,’ and throughout school, his achievements only reinforced that belief. Defeating Voldemort had cemented his legacy, but this… this was something else entirely. He had never felt power like this before and wondered if this was how Voldemort, Dumbeldore, or even Grindelwald felt like on the daily.
He cast every spell he could remember from the book when he happened upon him, each rip and tear of flesh like a symphony to his ears. His blood thrummed with each incantation, a pulse that reverberated through him with intoxicating intensity. Even the few hits Mulciber managed to land on him felt disturbingly good—a sickly kind of relief, like stretching a long-pulled muscle. The ache was almost pleasurable, feeding Harry’s fervour and driving him to push harder and faster, with a reckless hunger.
He’d done the same cleanup procedure he’d done with Yaxley, only this time apparating to a forest somewhere in Russia, he’d read a book the day before where the main character was traipsing around Europe so he’d just stolen the idea from there and was successful.
He hadn’t meant to steal his wand as some sort of ritual but he did and now he repeated the process with Yaxley. He liked having a trophy of sorts to remember the evening by.
With one last look at the shelf, he stood up, shut the light, and closed the door behind him, throwing up every sort of ward and locking spell he knew on it before going into his bathroom.
He flicked on the light and stared at his reflection in the mirror, his gaze blank and unyielding.
The same green eyes, his mother’s legacy, stared back at him. The slight bump along the bridge of his nose, the thin, dry lips, the sharper jawline he hadn’t seen in years—all familiar, yet foreign. His skin, now pale and dull, seemed to drain the life from the rest of him.
As Harry took stock of himself, everything appeared as it should have been—yet nothing felt right.
It was as if he were looking at some other version of himself, a near-perfect replica, like when a child’s pet dies and the parents bring home a replacement. The new one might look the same at first glance, but it didn’t have the white spot behind the ear, a tiny detail only the child would remember.
Harry was missing that white spot.
Maybe it was the blood that was splattered across his face, small dots like freckles littering his face and contrasting sharply with his features.
He kicked off his boots and peeled off the black top he had been wearing that was now drenched with rain, sweat, and blood and threw it on the ground, the wet smack echoing off the tiled walls. Next were his trousers, ripped but wearable, that he hung over a metal hook on the door.
He turned on the shower, standing motionless as he waited for the water to heat. Steam filled the room, curling into the air and glazing the metal fixtures with a slick sheen. His glasses fogged over almost instantly, and he tossed them aside, making a mental note to clean them later—there was still a smear of blood clinging stubbornly to the rim.
Tricky thing blood was, Harry had also learned, it managed to sneak into the smallest of places.
He stepped into the scalding shower, the water searing his skin as steam filled the tiny bathroom, thick and suffocating. It made him lightheaded and disoriented, but he refused to turn the temperature down. The pain was grounding; each drop felt like acid, but it was the only way he could feel clean again.
Grabbing a washcloth, he scrubbed himself with meticulous precision. First his hands, then his face, methodically working his way down his body. When he finished, he started over again, pressing harder this time, as if he could scour away what lingered beneath the surface. He continued until the water ran clear, all traces of blood, both his and Yaxley’s, gone.
His injured arm screamed in pain at the lack of care but it was a necessary abuse.
When he finished, he stepped out and grabbed the leftover gauze he had from his last kill and wrapped it around his arm, tight enough to hurt, and tore at it with his teeth before folding up the rest and carefully putting it away. He then manually wiped down the mirror, counter, and floor, going over it all again with a cleaning spell until it was like he was never in there at all.
He had never been a neat freak, but after the war, a compulsive need for cleanliness had taken root. Scrubbing his skin raw morning and night. Ensuring every countertop gleamed, every wrinkle smoothed from his bed as it was made. Even small rituals—like lining up his tea materials in perfect order of use—gave him a fragile tether to reality.
Perhaps it stemmed from Petunia’s constant reinforcement of order during his childhood. Miss a spot, and her sharp eyes would catch it, her hand quick to follow. He could still feel the sting of her wooden stick, hear the sharp crack against his skin, and the way it protested under the blow. Even now, the memory burned as much as the lessons she’d taught him. It was like he regressed somehow, finding order in rituals from his youth when there was none to be found in his life as he succumbed to his base desires.
When he went back downstairs, he was met with the face of Hermione who, at her own insistence, had rights over the floo meaning she could walk in anytime she pleased. She looked as she always did, her wild hair tied back in a plait, her clothes indicating she must have just finished her shift at the Ministry in the Care of Magical Creatures Department.
“Harry!” she smiled, turning to greet him.
“Hermione,” he returned the smile, painful as it was.
“How are you? It’s been so long,” she sighed, vanishing his tea cup and starting all over, moving everything around from where he carefully set it. His hands twitched in response.
He could already feel the high he was running on seep away and he desperately wanted Hermione to leave sooner rather than later lest she become witness to the complete breakdown he was.
“It’s only been a few days,” he responded tersely, casually moving everything back to where it was around her.
“You’re right, I suppose it just feels longer after spending practically every day together growing up,” she hummed, pouring the boiling water into his teacup.
“You’re right,” he responded, grinding his teeth together in agitation.
“I’m so glad you set the tele up in this house,” she smiled, grabbing her teacup and walking deeper into the house, “There’s this new movie on tonight we should watch,” she said over her shoulder as she entered the sitting room.
He had no choice but to follow her but his fingertips were already tingling, feeling like the static that showed up on the television once Hermione turned it on.
It was so loud, or was it just his mind? The lines were becoming blurred as he rubbed his temples but Hermione seemed fine so it must just be him.
He could see her lips moving but no sound was reaching his ears- only a high pitched noise, no- it was Yaxley. He screamed so loudly when Harry attacked him, screechy and loud like a child. It was hard to believe this was the same man who proudly named himself a death eater, a follower of the dark Lord.
He had succumbed to fear so easily.
The tingling was spreading up his arms, crawling through his limbs like a poison and his stomach lurched. He felt sweat bead his forehead, uncomfortably plastering his freshly wet hair to the back of his neck.
It would be so easy to ask for help.
He should have asked for it right after the war but he didn’t. He should have before Mulciber, after Mulciber, the long gap in between, before Yaxley, and now.
It was too late to do anything. Best case scenario, he’d be sent to Azkaban, worst case is he’d be sentenced to the Kiss.
He knew he was going down a dark path but this addiction that gnawed at him overpowered any semblance of rational thought. He wasn’t killing civilians- these were people that deserved to die a painful death for causing the death of his friends, but at the same time, he was using Unforgivables, he was hurting people.
He was becoming like them .
“Harry?” Hermione’s face came into view once more, her caramel coloured eyes molten as she stared at him, “Are you okay?”
“Yup, I’m fine, all good, what’s the movie then?” he choked out, facing the tele once more. His foot was jumping and his hands shook, the teacup rattling against the saucer he was holding in his right hand.
Dark spots danced across his vision and his teeth chattered- He was rapidly devolving from his high. Floating higher into euphoria was so easy, it was the come down that he hated.
“You don’t look fine, your hands,” she spoke quickly, taking the teacup from his hand and setting it down, “My god, your burning up,” her cool hand was a brief relief against his hot skin.
“I think I- I just-” was all he managed before his vision swam and turned black.
His limbs relaxed and he was offered a moment’s peace from the torment that had become his life.
___
“Same thing?” Malfoy asked a tech as he approached the yellow tape and protective bubble encasing the scene of the crime.
“Unfortunately,” Marya replied sadly, clutching her clipboard with white fingers before bustling past him.
He sighed as he pressed a hand to the bubble and stepped through the opening that had formed for him.
He instantly recognized the man as Corban Yaxley.
He hadn’t always been able to identify them so easily. In those days, Death Eaters came and went from his home with such frequency that he’d never bothered to learn their names. Back then, he had relied so heavily on Occlumency to shield himself that his memories from that time felt sealed away, locked so deeply within his mind that even he could barely access them now.
He approached Robbards who stood stoically at the scene, arms crossed over his broad chest, brows furrowed. “Sometimes I wonder whether it’s even worth it to go into this sort of thing. Seems like the man is doing us all a favour but bloody hell, he’s not right in the head,” he said, shaking his own head at the deformed body of Yaxley.
Malfoy pulled his trousers up a bit before crouching down closer to the body- the slit across the neck was jarringly obvious but it was thin and deep, the attacker clearly wanted Yaxley to feel the blood flowing out of his body with no way to stop it. The skin on his face and neck was mottled and purple with fresh bruises, a prod with his wand had shown that the bruises spread down to his chest. His nails had been pulled and the skin on his hands shredded.
“The autopsy will reveal more but the cause of death is clearly the laceration across the neck, Yaxley fought till the end. The body is warm but rigour mortis has set in so I’d say the killer alerted us almost immediately after the kill,” he informed both Robbards and another Auror who was standing by, taking notes.
“Why go through it all just to call us? It would’ve been easier to just hide the body wouldn’t it?” the younger Auror whose name tag identified her as Lira asked.
“I imagine a part of him wants us to know about the kill as it happens, gets some sort of satisfaction out of it” he retorted, again using his wand to touch the body. “He has gravel embedded in his palm, the killer moved him just like he did Mulciber,” he commented, looking around at the rather scenic location they were at.
Robbards cursed under his breath, “We don’t know who did this, where he did this, and he doesn’t even leave a fucking trace of magic or evidence…” he trailed off as he rubbed the side of his head.
Draco stood up then and readjusted his cloak, “We'll find him soon, he can't run forever."
Robbards nodded and turned to him, “I understand how this may be…difficult but your knowledge on this is invaluable Malfoy.”
“It’s not difficult at all Sir,” he replied quickly before nodding and disapparating back to his office in the Ministry. He immediately pulled a bottle of Ogden’s finest out of his bottom drawer and poured himself a glass as he sat in his chair and thought about what he’d just seen.
He couldn’t find it in himself to feel any sort of sympathy or pity for the man but at the same time, the brutality in the way he was killed, the ruthlessness in the killer- it was jarring to say the least.
Especially because, while he was acquitted of his crimes during the war, he was still a death eater along with Yaxley and Mulciber. Draco knew he could be next…
The thought was enough to make his stomach bottom out and he threw back the contents of the glass wishing he could have another but he was unable to as he needed to continue working on this case immediately- the longer they waited, the more risk they took on.
He worked through the night alongside the other Aurors on the graveyard shift, the hours blurring together as the pile of empty coffee cups in his bin grew higher. By the time the sun began its slow crawl over the horizon, his vision was starting to blur, and exhaustion weighed heavily on him.
He knew he’d hit his limit. Gathering his things, he left the office, but home wasn’t an option—not yet. Instead, he Apparated to a quiet street near St. Mungo’s, the crisp morning air biting against his skin and keeping him awake just a little longer.
He walked to the small corner shop where Marco, the manager, smiled and said in his usual chipper tone, “Same thing Malfoy?”
“Same thing Marco,” he replied, putting a pack of strawberry-flavoured gum on the counter.
“Strawberry? You’re really running out of flavours aren’t you?” he wrinkled his nose, scanning it.
“I happen to like strawberry,” he replied, wiping the grimace off his face that came with the thought- he actually hated it but he and Marco always played this game and he didn’t want to prove him right.
He entered St. Mungo’s via a side entrance and took the lift to the Janus Thickey Ward. It was rather nice, all white walls and instrumental music drifting through the corridors but it always gave him a sense of dread walking through it and seeing patients in various states of mental capacity live out the rest of their lives in the same four walls.
It reminded him of his mother who wasn’t doing much better but at least had the luxury of living the rest of her life at the Manor, though she wasn’t remembering much these days anyways.
He ambled down to the last room on the right and steeled himself before stepping in-
“Good evening Mrs. Longbottom,” he smiled tightly, looking down at the small woman sitting in a chair by the window. She turned slightly at his arrival but it was as though there was wool over her eyes because she didn’t register any of it, her chocolate brown eyes seeing through him before she turned away, uninterested, again,
“Mr. Longbottom,” he greeted the man right next to her who didn’t turn at all. He was completely deaf in one ear but Draco could be standing there with an Amplifying charm and it wouldn’t matter anyways- he was nothing more than a mere vessel, somehow even more unreactive than his wife.
“I brought you some more gum,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket and gently placing it in her palm, pressing down to trigger her grasping reflex.
She shifted then, her hands tightening around the packet before she carefully opened it. Sliding out a stick of gum, she placed it in her mouth, chewing slowly as she crumpled the wrapper in her fist and shoved it into the shallow pocket of her purple cardigan.
He wasn’t sure why he’d started or continued, but he supposed it stemmed from a mix of residual guilt for his aunt’s actions and the empathy born from watching his own mother gradually deteriorate under months of curses and war-induced stress. One more Crucio or curse and she might have been in the same spot as Alice and Frank, occupying a hospital room just like theirs across the hall.
He just so happened to see Longbottom in the lobby of the hospital after a fellow Auror had got caught with a nasty hex while on the clock and he, who had the tact of a slug, just stopped in the middle and openly stared at him for so long that Draco had to acknowledge his existence. Longbottom spilled that he was on his way to visit his parents and it got him thinking- wondering.
Longbottom showed him the wrappers he kept in his wallet, how he treasured them as though they were strips of gold. Had it not been for Bellatrix, his parents might have been able to give him actual gifts though he knew Neville only wished for them to know him.
His visits were odd and always left him unsettled but he felt better for it, he just wished he knew which flavour was her favourite.
He did a general wellness check on them both before bidding them a goodnight and leaving as though he had never been there at all.
“Mr. Malfoy, I just wanted to let you know that your payment for the next month has gone through, they’ll be taken care of,” the head-mediwitch in charge let him know in a straightforward move.
“Thanks Riona,” he nodded before heading out wishing she didn’t do that every month because knowing his luck, someone would overhear and cause a scene about it.
Longbottom believed his parents’ care was funded by newly allocated government resources for war victims, but in reality, Malfoy had taken personal responsibility for their expenses, drawing from his family vault. It was the least he could do, really—but he had no intention of letting Longbottom find out. Malfoy preferred to keep his more admirable qualities to himself.
He went to the Manor to check on his mother before going home, a habit he couldn’t possibly break, and was relieved when the mediwitch told him that she was sleeping. Though when he went home, his thoughts about the murderer spiralled once more.
He added another ward to his flat, but the effort felt hollow. The murderer was relentless, and if Malfoy became a target, surely no barrier could withstand the resolve of someone hell-bent on scrubbing the world clean of Death Eaters— reformed or not.