Kitten Troubles

Chapter 14

Fear engulfed the old man's eyes as he realized who had walked in.

"You, my friend, are supposed to be dead. You should have died during that fight with Grindelwald, you should have died when Tom rose to power the first time, you should have died the second time Tom rose to power and you should have died two weeks ago." Severus and Tom turned off most of the blinding lights, only leaving a few on for more natural looking light.

"Harry, I do think it's high time Dumbledore gets to see just exactly what a shadow demon looks like when they've been betrayed by someone they trusted so completely." Tom's voice travelled through the room and sent shivers down Dumbledore's back.

Without saying anything, Harry walked until he was right in front of Dumbledore. He looked into the old man's eyes. They had lost their twinkle so long ago, and now only held fear. For a brief moment, he saw a glimmer of hope in the blue eyes, but that quickly dissipated into nothing as he allowed his transformation to take over.

His eyes changed first, followed by his hair and physique. True terror flashed in Dumbledore's face before quickly being hidden behind a false layer of bravado.

"My boy, don't you realize I was only trying to help you?"

"By sending me off to my death? By lying to me, hiding the truth from me, and using me as nothing more than a pawn? Please, spare me. You didn't try to help me, you tried to use me for your own gain. You wanted nothing but power and by killing me off, you would have obtained it immediately. And every single time I came out of encounters with Tom you would instill fear in me, tell me how close I came to death and then you would tell me over and over again that I needed to trust you because you were the only thing that could keep me alive.

"If you were truly trying to help me, then you would have been honest with me from the start. When I asked what was wrong with me or why I was experiencing things no one else was, you did everything in your power to avoid me. You were using my own insecurities against me to make me think that I was going crazy and would just take your word for the truth." He paused, letting venom drip from his voice. "But I digress. Had you done any of that I would have started looking into everything in the situation. Eventually I would have put two and two together enough to be suspicious of you. I would have put up a small barrier between myself and you and this war. I would have had an opportunity to do some extensive digging to figure out just what all of this meant. But instead, I had to fight for my life for YEARS, losing those I love most in the process. I had to fear for my life, under the impression that someone was after me when really I should have been worried I could have died from the creature inside of me." He inhaled deeply, not sure how far he wanted to take this. When he talked again, his voice was much calmer, yet just as deadly.

"Did you know that shadow demons commonly die before they are twenty due to the vast amount of changes they go through in such a short amount of time? It's because when you have all those hormones twisting up your instincts, you have no idea if someone could be a potential mate or if someone poses you a threat or if it's just your hormones playing with your mind. And of course none of this is something you think about, it's something you just feel. It wreaks havoc on your emotions and makes you start to think you're not good enough, that you're always going to have to rely on others when you should be the one holding everyone else up. Combine all that with a kid that has millions of people looking up to him to save them, and you've created a self-destructive teenager if I've ever heard of one.

"The odds of Tom killing me were large, but the odds of me killing myself were so high that I am SHOCKED that I am standing here today. But that's alright. Living this long has all been for one thing." He leaned in, nose to nose with the old man that tried to have him die over and over again. "I've lived this long so I can personally oversee your death." The shadows slowly started to swirl and move around him, rising from the ground in a long, thin pillar up to his hand. When they melted away, it left only Harry standing there with the sword of Gryffindor in his hand. He lifted it up, looked back at Dumbledore with his green eyes and said "Uvidimsya v adu, mudak." He swung his arm down in one long arc, and sliced cleanly through Dumbledore's neck.

Death was instantaneous, and the trio of men walked out of the building before setting it ablaze with fiendfyre.

"Severus,"

"Yes, my lord?" Severus's voice was just as quiet as the demon's.

"Can I trust that he is truly gone?"

"I had done extensive research on the man whilst being loyal to him. I had inside knowledge of things that no one else knew. Some of which, I'm not even sure he knew. He talked in his sleep, and didn't know how to look for my particular signature on dark magic. I did learn that he had one singular horcrux. And that, Harry, was the sword you just killed him with. You had completely destroyed the horcrux within it when you killed the basilisk and now you have ensured that what remains of him is destroyed in this fire. I truly believe that he is gone."

"Good." He took a deep breath, turned and vanished into the shadows to travel home.