Harry Potter: Multiverse Maelstrom: Chapter 13: The Karma Curse

The silence in the viewing hall was a heavy, loaded thing. The last story had ended with the wizarding world exposed as a failed state in the eyes of the Muggles, its greatest hero having abandoned it for a normal life, and its greatest villain being systematically dismantled by soldiers with guns. The grief of the Weasley family still echoed in the quiet, a painful reminder of the price of prejudice. Dumbledore, disgraced and isolated, looked like a king who had lost his kingdom.

"And so, a world without its hero decays," Jack announced, his voice pulling the audience from their somber reflections. "A cautionary tale. But the multiverse is a place of infinite variety." He clapped his hands, the sharp sound dispelling the gloom like a charm. "We've seen a world where Harry was replaced. We've seen a world where Harry ran away. Now..." A wicked, manic grin spread across his face, one that was unnervingly similar to Bellatrix Lestrange's. "Let's see a world where Harry decided to stop playing games and start collecting debts."

The screen wiped clean, and the metadata for a third, entirely different reality appeared, its title alone sending a ripple of confusion and apprehension through the room.

Title: Harry's Happy Cursing

By: White Angel of Auralon

Summary: A mysterious illness spreads all over wizarding Britain. No healer knows the reason and they are helpless in finding a solution. Though once the truth about the origins of the sickness come out, people Change their tune quickly.

Rated: PG-13 (Contains content not suitable for children. Suitable for teens, 13 years and older. May contain moderate violence, coarse language, suggestive material, and/or adult themes such as drug addiction that are contextually justified..)

Genre: Suspense

"'Happy Cursing'?" Fred Weasley read aloud, a slow grin spreading across his face. "George, I think we're going to like this one."

"It has a certain ring to it, brother of mine," George replied, his eyes twinkling with a mischievous light they hadn't held since the news of Ginny's alternate death.

Molly Weasley, however, was not amused. "Cursing is not something to be happy about, boys," she said sternly, though her voice lacked its usual force.

The genre, 'Suspense', intrigued the more analytical minds. "A mystery, then," Remus Lupin murmured. "A magical plague. An interesting premise."

But before they could speculate further, the story began, plunging them directly into the mind of a very different, very dangerous Harry Potter.

<Chapter 1 Start>

His grin was manic. He had truly done it. He had managed to keep all the bastards that tried making his life hell in the dark and now it was time to screw them over for a change. Poor, manipulative, old Dumbledore. Thought he could control him and push him onto the path of a martyr. Poor, insane Tommy Boy. He actually thought that he was stronger than him and had a chance. Poor wizarding world. People actually believed that they could treat him like dirt and he would still fight for them. No, he let of an evil chuckle, it was time for him to show them how wrong they were. He wasn't a puppet, he wasn't a martyr, he wasn't a golden boy, he wasn't a scapegoat and he surely wasn't an idiot.

The audience was thrown back on their heels by the sheer, unadulterated venom and glee radiating from the screen. The screen showed a teenage Harry, older than the last one, maybe fifth year, his face half-shrouded in shadow, a manic, triumphant grin stretching his lips.

"My word," James Potter breathed, utterly shocked. The voice was his son's, but the sentiment was terrifying. "That's... that's not him."

"Tommy Boy?" Voldemort's voice was a low, deadly hiss. The casual, dismissive insult was a greater offense than any curse. His red eyes burned with a furious, murderous light. "The boy dares..."

Dumbledore flinched as if struck. 'Manipulative, old Dumbledore'. The accusation from the first story was back, but this time it wasn't a tool for political gain; it was a stated fact from a Harry who had decided to declare war on him.

"This is... deeply disturbing," Lily said, her voice trembling. "The darkness in his thoughts, the 'evil chuckle'... this is a Harry who has been pushed too far. He sounds... unhinged."

It was time to let his inner Marauder out to play. And when he was playing, others would be crying. He was going to turn things upside down, beginning with shattering the belief of the public in their symbols of light or dark.

Sirius and James exchanged an uneasy look. They had always been proud of their Marauder legacy, a legacy of fun, rebellion, and loyalty. To hear it invoked as a justification for making people cry, for a campaign of what sounded like terror, was a perversion of everything they had stood for.

"That's not what being a Marauder is about," Sirius said, a frown creasing his brow. "Pranks are supposed to be funny, not cruel."

"His goal is to shatter belief in both the light and the dark," Dumbledore observed, his voice grave. "He is not choosing a side. He is choosing to destroy the entire board. This is an act of pure magical anarchy."

If anybody had been able to compare the conditions of several 'well-respected' purebloods with each other, they might see a pattern. But then again, nobody would do so, as that ugly dark tattoo on their left forearms was the cause of their symptoms, which meant they couldn't go to public places like St. Mungo's to receive help.

The screen showed a series of quick, jarring flashes: Lucius Malfoy, pale and sweating, collapsing in his manor. Bellatrix Lestrange, writhing on the floor, her usual manic laughter replaced by agonized screams. Other masked figures, all in states of extreme distress in their own opulent homes.

"They're sick," Narcissa Malfoy whispered, her hand flying to her mouth in horror as she watched her husband and sister suffering. "All of them. What is this?"

If anybody had been able to watch both the leaders of the sides of light and dark, they would have wondered why both were suffering from the same sickness. Both were forced to stay in bed, both were violently sick to their stomachs, both felt pain in all body parts, increasing and decreasing in level, running a high fever and prone to bleed from the smallest of injuries... Their skins were seemingly paper-thin.

The screen split, showing two horrific images side-by-side. On one side, Voldemort, his snake-like form trembling under sweat-soaked sheets. On the other, Albus Dumbledore, pale and feverish in his bed in the hospital wing. The symptoms were identical.

The audience erupted in chaos.

"Dumbledore has been poisoned?!" McGonagall cried out, horrified.

"And the Dark Lord!" a shocked Death Eater exclaimed. "By the same affliction!"

Madam Pomfrey, who had been summoned, stared at the screen, her medical mind racing. "Violent nausea, fluctuating somatic pain, high-grade fever, extreme dermal fragility... I've never seen anything like it. It presents like an acute autoimmune collapse combined with a blood-thinning curse, but the dual targets make no sense. It must be a new form of magical plague."

At the hideout of Lord Voldemort there weren't any people left capable of taking care of the sick dark lord. ... At Hogwarts... Albus Dumbledore had at least some care... As it were the Christmas holidays, there thankfully weren't many students remaining at the school. Most had gone home to get away from the horrible DADA teacher, Dolores Umbridge...

A short, toad-like woman in a fluffy pink cardigan suddenly appeared in the hall, a sickeningly sweet smile on her face. "Did someone mention my name?" Dolores Umbridge simpered, her eyes darting around. She saw Dumbledore, looking frail and sick on the screen, and her smile widened with genuine, malicious glee. "Oh dear. It seems the Headmaster is feeling a bit under the weather." Her presence was so vile it made the air feel greasy.

The mention that this was happening during Harry's fifth year gave the audience a timeline. This was a Harry who had endured the Ministry's smear campaign, the loss of his godfather in a way (in his mind), and the daily torture of Umbridge's detentions.

Harry Potter watched the events on his collection of two-way spy mirrors, which were put on each Death Eater thanks to his loyal elves Dobby and Winky. He had created the mirrors based on a description in a book of the best pranks that the Marauders had pulled during their time at school.

The revelation hit the room like a thunderclap. Harry was behind it all.

Winky, the former Crouch house-elf, appeared next to Dobby, looking bewildered. "The Great Harry Potter is spying on bad masters?" Dobby squeaked, his eyes wide with awe.

James and Sirius stared at the screen, a mixture of horror and breathtaking pride on their faces. "He took our two-way mirrors," James breathed. "And he weaponized them. He's monitoring the entire enemy army."

"That's not a prank, Prongs," Sirius said, a wild grin spreading across his face. "That's espionage. That's genius!"

So, pretending to not notice, he had learned things about magic that none of the other students knew. After meeting Dobby, he had put two and two together and had looked for the elves at Hogwarts. Thanks to their help, he had found the Room of Requirement, which supplied him with books and instruction about forgotten and incredibly useful magic. Like the curse he had put onto Voldemort and his bootlickers and, as the old man was a bastard as well, Dumbledore also got a curse for free.

"The Room of Requirement," Dumbledore murmured, his eyes widening in understanding. "Of course. The castle provided him with what he needed. An arsenal."

The casual, callous way this Harry referred to cursing Dumbledore—"for free"—sent a fresh wave of shock through the Order. This was not the Harry they knew. This was a cold, calculating, and ruthless magical practitioner.

The curse he had put on them was simple. The one being cursed would experience the pain and suffering that went along for each victim, whose life he had destroyed in one way or another, multiplied by four.

The nature of the curse was revealed, and the room fell into a stunned, contemplative silence. It was not a simple killing curse. It was not a curse of pain. It was a curse of empathy. A curse of justice. A curse of karma.

Bellatrix Lestrange, who had been writhing on the screen, was now shown with a ghostly overlay of a screaming, tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom. Voldemort’s image was overlaid with hundreds, thousands of faces—James, Lily, and countless others. Dumbledore's image was overlaid with a smaller, but no less painful, collection of faces—his sister, Ariana; a young, charismatic Grindelwald; a wrongly-imprisoned Sirius Black.

A new set of figures appeared: Frank and Alice Longbottom, whole and healthy as they were before the attack. They looked at the screen, at Bellatrix screaming, and Alice began to weep, not for Bellatrix, but for the pain she was being forced to relive through her tormentor. Frank held her, his face a grim mask of satisfaction.

"He's making them feel it," Remus breathed, his voice filled with a terrible awe. "All of it. Every life they ruined, every bit of pain they caused."

"But... but Dumbledore?" a stunned Molly Weasley asked. "Surely he hasn't destroyed as many lives as Voldemort?"

"Perhaps the curse is not measuring by quantity, but by the depth of the betrayal," Sirius said, his voice hard. He looked at Dumbledore. "You didn't kill me. You just let me rot in hell for twelve years. I wonder what that feels like, multiplied by four."

He would have been hit too, had Dobby not told him about the dark magic in his scar and asked the house elf elders to remove the taint from Harry.

"The house-elf elders removed the Horcrux?!" Dumbledore exclaimed, his voice a mixture of disbelief and astonishment. "Such a feat of magic... it should be impossible!"

Voldemort let out a furious screech. A piece of his own soul, removed by a house-elf? The indignity was absolute.

"Wizards really do underestimate house-elves," Hermione said, a look of profound vindication on her face.

Wizards really underestimated house elves. The curse had been delivered by Lucius Malfoy ironically. ... Harry had cursed the whole sack of galleons that Malfoy planned to hand over to Voldemort the next day. ... It had really been a mistake of Voldemort to take Harry's blood.

The screen showed a flashback: the alternate Harry, cloaked in shadows, holding a sack of gold in Malfoy Manor while Dobby stood watch. He whispered a complex incantation, his magic flowing into the coins.

Lucius Malfoy looked as if he was going to be physically sick. He, Lucius, had been the carrier of his own master's downfall.

"The blood connection," Voldemort realized with dawning horror. "He used my own blood in him as an anchor for the curse. A perfect, unbreakable link." The ingenuity of it was as infuriating as it was brilliant.

Shortly after the whole war was on hold... For Dumbledore Harry had had it even easier. He only had to put the curse on a bag of lemon drops, which he left at the entrance to the office. Sucker for the muggle sweets that Dumbledore was, he ate them, not knowing that the curse on the bag had been triggered. Moody would have shouted about 'Constant Vigilance' for not checking the bag for something like that.

The real Moody grunted his approval. "Damn right I would have! Taking sweets from an unknown source? In the middle of a war? That's first-year foolishness, Albus!"

Dumbledore looked at the ever-present bowl of lemon drops on the small table beside his chair in the viewing hall and felt a sudden wave of nausea. His one small, harmless vice had been turned into a weapon against him. It was a perfectly targeted, deeply personal attack.

Well, with how long the two leaders had been in the game of destroying people's life, they were in for at least a month of pain and suffering. And the next target was Umbridge, who would also get Fudge. Let's see how they liked being the ones to suffer.

The final lines of the chapter were a chilling promise. The screen showed the alternate Harry, his manic grin returning, as he held up a frilly pink teacup and a bowler hat, a faint, dark magic beginning to swirl around them.

Dolores Umbridge, who had been watching with smug satisfaction, suddenly felt a very real, very cold trickle of fear run down her spine. The boy was coming for her next.

The audience was left in a state of moral turmoil. This Harry was terrifying. He was using dark, powerful, and cruel magic. But his targets were the monsters who had ruined his life, and his weapon was not death, but a terrible, poetic justice. Was he a hero? A villain? Or something else entirely?

The screen went dark, the echo of Harry's evil chuckle seeming to hang in the air.

<Chapter 1 End> was displayed on the screen.