Work Text:
Chapter 1: The Hufflepuff Incident
It started innocently enough. A few Hufflepuffs whispered in the hallway.
"He's the Heir of Slytherin, I swear it."
"Did you see how he talks to snakes?"
"Cedric says he was hissing at a radiator for ten minutes..."
Harry heard them.
So that night, with a grin too wide and eyes glowing with the kind of chaotic light normally reserved for unstable Dark wizards, he kicked in the door to the Hufflepuff common room.
Boom.
"WHO SAID IT?" he shouted, wand spinning between his fingers like a revolver.
The Hufflepuffs froze mid-boardgame. Susan Bones whimpered. Ernie Macmillan dropped his Gobstones.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out? YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW WHO TALKS IN THIS CASTLE? I talk to the walls, you little muffins!" Harry howled, then dove shoulder first into a beanbag chair like it had personally insulted his mother.
"What the hell, Potter?" one brave Hufflepuff asked. He never finished the sentence. A perfectly-aimed jelly-legs jinx turned him into a twitching puddle.
He cackled. "I'm the heir of Slytherin?" Harry said, jumping up onto a table. "THEN LET ME INHERIT THIS PLACE!"
He kicked over a tea set. He hexed a portrait of Helga Hufflepuff into looking like Snape in drag. When a particularly bold fifth-year tried to stop him, Harry threw down a smoke bomb he definitely shouldn't have access to and vanished into the shadows, laughing like a Batman villain.
Chapter 2: The Fire of Champions
Later that year, after his name flew out of the Goblet of Fire, Harry faced his biggest insult yet.
"He's not even a real champion," someone sneered in the hallway.
He turned slowly.
It was Zacharias Smith.
Oh no.
"Oh, I'm not a real champion?" Harry said, smile twitching, eyes wide and glassy.
"No, you're just—you're not even supposed to be in the Tournament!"
That night, the Hufflepuff common room burned.
No one could prove it was Harry, of course. But several witnesses did recall seeing a boy-sized figure in a school robe and a dragon-hide cloak, throwing bottles of Bubotuber pus into the fireplace while humming the Triwizard Tournament anthem off-key.
When Dumbledore arrived, Harry was sitting on a smoldering sofa, toasting a marshmallow over the flames.
"Did you do this, Harry?" the Headmaster asked.
"I am a champion," Harry said, unblinking, before biting the marshmallow off the stick like it was a Dark artifact.
Chapter 3: The Loyal Support System
Hermione never mentioned the bloodthirsty glint in his eye. Not once.
"He's just under stress," she muttered to herself, watching Harry carve "I AM THE TOURNAMENT" into a tree with a cursed quill.
"But he hexed a houseplant for being 'too smug,'" Neville whispered.
"Perfectly understandable," Hermione replied.
By the time Harry started walking into the Great Hall wearing a tattered cloak made of what might have been Cornish Pixie wings, muttering about how "The Dark Lord won't know what hit him," Hermione was actively cataloguing how many laws he broke—just in case the Ministry asked—but she wasn't going to stop him.
If anything, she pitied Voldemort.
"He's not ready for this level of unhinged," she said quietly, sipping her tea. "He's bringing a wand to a psychological warfare battle."
Ron, on the other hand, was the perfect enabler.
"You think maybe Harry's... you know... going a bit off the deep end?" Dean asked.
Ron just shrugged. "Is he hurt?"
"No... but—"
"Then he can burn the world," Ron replied cheerfully, throwing a chocolate frog into his mouth. "Long as he's okay."
Chapter 4: The Final Straw
The Death Eaters were growing restless.
Whispers had reached them from inside Hogwarts:
The boy had snapped.
The Chosen One was no longer just "defiant."
He was unpredictable. Unstable.
Possibly... deranged.
Bellatrix Lestrange was thrilled.
"I want to play with him," she cackled. "I want to see what his insides look like—when he's laughing!"
But even she quieted when the fifth Death Eater didn't return.
The first had gone in smugly, Polyjuiced as McGonagall.
Harry hexed him so hard he turned into a coffee table.
The second walked in through the Floo in the Gryffindor common room.
He stepped out of the fire and Harry greeted him with a wandless scream and a bucket of dismembered magical toys labeled "Horcrux Recycler."
The man tried to Disapparate. He reappeared inside a soup cauldron.
The third tried to catch Harry outside during Herbology.
Harry bit him before casting Waddiwasi with enough force to send a mandrake through the man's eye socket.
By the time they sent the fifth—Antonin Dolohov—he lasted less than thirty seconds.
He showed up in the Astronomy Tower.
Harry was already there.
"I was wondering when you'd come," Harry said calmly, holding a crossbow and what looked like a Quidditch Beater's bat duct-taped to a wand.
Dolohov raised his wand.
Harry laughed.
The laugh was wrong. It echoed. The tower shook.
"I made a potion that makes your bones vibrate until they explode. Want a demonstration?" Harry asked, tone friendly—like a shopkeeper offering samples.
Dolohov flung a curse.
Harry deflected it with a frying pan.
"Did you know fried magic smells like betrayal?"
The next day, all that returned of Dolohov was a boot—and a note.
It read:
"Don't send more. I'm running out of closet space."
Lucius Malfoy dropped his glass of firewhisky.
Bellatrix said nothing for once.
Voldemort stopped smiling for the first time in months.
Epilogue: The Forest and the Boy Who Burned
It was quiet in the Forbidden Forest.
Harry stood alone, wand at his side, dirt on his face, eyes wide and bright.
He wasn't trembling. He wasn't scared. He was... smirking.
Across from him, Lord Voldemort emerged from the trees, flanked by his Death Eaters.
A dozen wands pointed at Harry.
Voldemort stepped forward.
"So... this is how the boy dies," he said with theatrical gravity. "Alone. Surrounded. Beaten."
Harry tilted his head.
"Alone?" He smiled. "Oh, Tom... you wish I was alone."
In the distance, something screamed. It was unclear if it was magical or just wrong.
Voldemort narrowed his eyes.
"You could have joined me," he said. "You could have ruled. We are alike—you and I."
Harry's expression sharpened into something... dangerous.
"You think we're alike?" he whispered.
He took one step forward, and the air crackled around him.
"I burned the Hufflepuff common room twice because someone said I wasn't a real champion. I banished a basilisk out of spite. I once Transfigured Snape's desk into a bear trap."
He paused. "On accident. But I left it there."
Voldemort opened his mouth, but Harry wasn't done.
"I enchanted your name into my alarm clock. So every morning I wake up and remember that I'm going to ruin you."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, blackened shard.
"A piece of your soul lives in me. That was your mistake."
He crushed it between his fingers like ash.
Voldemort staggered.
Harry smiled, teeth too white, too calm. "And I'm the mistake you'll never be rid of."
He raised his wand, and the forest howled.
Fire erupted from the trees. Centaurs galloped away in panic. Even the spiders retreated.
"Avada Ked—" Voldemort began.
"Expelliarmus, you moldy turnip!" Harry screamed.
The spell hit like a bomb. Not just disarming—but obliterating. Voldemort was blasted backward, his wand skittering across the dirt.
The Death Eaters scattered. Most ran. One burst into tears. Bellatrix collapsed laughing and started digging a grave for herself.
Harry walked forward, slowly, savoring it.
"You called me the Boy Who Lived," he said softly. "But that wasn't right."
He looked down at Voldemort, broken and twitching in the mud.
"I'm the Boy Who Burned."
Then he turned and walked into the flaming forest, laughing quietly to himself.
THE END.
Or maybe... the beginning of something worse.