Sometimes Bad is Good

Chapter Eighteen

Smoke billowed up in thick towers from the cinders of what used to be the Ministry's ceiling, almost masking the sharp cloying scent of death in the room, but not quite. A lone figure was lying in a puddle of inky robes in the middle of the rubble, almost a perfect circle of scorched marble beneath it. The terrible facial features of a serpent man stared blankly up at the broken roof, blood as dark as the robes it wore and as thick as mud was splattered across the translucent skin as if stroked by an artists fingers, and if one looked close enough at the figure, sharp and obviously broken bones were pointing up and out of the robes, presenting the image that the serpent man had been impaled on a bed of stakes.

But Harry knew better.

"Master!" A shrill voice screamed into the deafening silence of the hall. Harry watched on dully as a figure in long black Death Eater robes streaked into his vision and threw themself at the remains of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, the heated wand in his hand tingling in anticipation. "My Lord! No, let it not be true! You must be alive, you must be!"

"Oh he's alive, he's getting ready to go dancing and bowling with all his other friends," Harry deadpanned, taking aim at the enemy.

The Death Eater froze where he knelt, his hands still grasping at the soaked fabric as if willing something to happen, anything. "You . . . You killed him," the man choked, not turning his bowed head to face him, but to stare down at the bloody mess known as his Master. "You killed the only one capable of setting our world to rights. You killed my Master!"

"I saved us all," Harry stated thinly, his voice flat and raising the hair on the nape of the mans neck.

"YOU RUINED US ALL!"

Harry ducked instinctively as a bright red curse zipped passed where his head used to be, and quickly rolled to the right where no large chunks of rubble blocked him from moving. "Expelliarmus!" He spat, flicking his wand expertly at the man as he righted himself.

The Death Eater seethed as his short bendy wand spun out of his hand, and pounced on top of a battle weary Harry with surprising speed, his dirtied and blood soaked hands immediately latching around Harry's throat and squeezing until the knuckles were white. "You killed my Master!" The man repeated shrilly, yellow rotting teeth exposed in a primal snarl as Harry struggled, kicked, and bucked his knees up into the man's narrow thighs. "And now I'm going to kill you!" He roared, his spittle flying onto Harry's grimacing face.

Anger flooded Harry's drained body, tensing him up and stopping him from flopping about limply as the Death Eater tried his damnedest to strangle the life out of him. Harry hissed out a breath, and hurriedly removed his right hand from the man's wrist where he'd been fighting to push it away, and instead swung it as hard and fast as he could at the Death Eater's exposed face. The man's cheekbone crumpled under his fist with a horrifying series of cracks, and it was enough to free him from the life ending grip.

But he didn't stop swinging, even when the shrieking man was curled up on the floor in a pile of broken bones and blood, his face awash with the bright ruby liquid. The anger was just so strong, so all encompassing that he continued to stomp on the broken man long after he'd stopped drawing breath, his feet only crushing the bones into smaller piles instead of snapping them like they had at the beginning.

It was only when he slipped and fell onto his arse did he notice that he was crying, and that he was completely covered in blood both his own, Voldemort's, and Voldemort's followers. He'd hit the man so much and so strongly that he was sitting in a pool of blood that looked as if someone had been gutted and left to bleed out all over the floor. Harry felt gutted himself.