It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It always was. The rush he got from the magic coursing through his body, unbridled, unrestrained, had no comparison. The power, raw and untamed, sent waves of glee through him. Ever since the Dementor attack something had pulled at his gut, his heart, and it wouldn’t let go until he let it go.

And, Merlin was he happy when he did. He felt lighter than air, his head was up in the clouds, he was flying on such a high that he’d never felt before. His name had just been called from the Goble of Fire. He was to compete in tasks that could possibly cause his death but he just didn’t care.

The dark magic all but consumed him. He was addicted. Roaming the Forbidden Forest late at night, among dark creatures that would run with him, following his magic, he had never felt more alive than he did in that very moment.

He let the magic burst out of him. He had more control now. He focused it on casting spells. He wondered what the Entrail-Expelling Curse would do to a tree. He focused and he cast. The tree warped and shuddered, its leaves shaking and falling to the ground. The branches curled around the trunk as if for some sort of protection from an outside force. But Harry’s curse worked from the inside. There was no stopping it.

Slowly, the tree began to leak sap. It spilled over the rough bark and dribbled to the ground. Harry’s pupils dilated as he watched, pushing more and more of his magic into the tree. The liquid started coming out faster and faster, the small puddle it was forming on the ground was being soaked up by the soil pretty quickly.

Not long after Harry’s next push of magic, the tree turned inside out. It was almost grotesque, but fascinating nonetheless. Harry had just controlled life and death, albeit only of a tree. He could have stopped his magic if he had wanted and let the tree live with only a little sap lost. But he didn’t. He went all the way, and now that tree was dead.

Harry felt no guilt in what he had done, just as he would feel no guilt when he did it again. The tugging in his gut ceased but he was still on a high from the sheer power he had just had. This time was so much better than the first. He no longer feared what he had done, he embraced it, loved it, even.

The first time, it was an accident. He’d been so angry; he wasn’t in control of his mind or his body.

He blew up a tree… or ten.

He’d tried to replicate it numerous times after. He felt tonight had come quite close. He’d tried to get angry enough; at Dudley, at his aunt, at his uncle, at himself. None of it worked. So he started reading.

He came across all manner of new spells and theories. He found the theories on dark magic the most interesting. It seemed that the generally accepted definition of dark magic had a lot to do with the will, and the intention, of the caster. Another was that all curses, hexes and jinxes included, were dark magic no matter what. A third theory he had read said that any spell that caused physical injury to another person was dark magic.

Harry experimented until he came up with his own definition of it; it was magic that made him feel good. Powerful. Unstoppable.

He never did replicate that first spell with quite the same effect as he had. But when his uncle would beat him down, he’d use the magic to rise back up. When his uncle made him feel worthless, the magic made him feel important.  But each time his uncle would just beat him harder. Whenever he saw that little light in his nephew’s eyes, that bit of hope, of happiness, he had to get rid of it.

Of course, Harry wasn’t stupid enough to try any of the spells he learnt, but knowing the theory, and knowing that he could helped. Putting his theory into practice would get him kicked out of Hogwarts and his wand broken. If he ever wanted revenge, he’d have to be careful about using his magic outside of school.

That’s what drove him at the start, made him want to learn more. Revenge. Well, that and the initial thrill he’d felt blowing up those trees. But mostly revenge. He was supposed to go to the Quidditch World Cup with Ron, but that never happened. Something must have happened to really piss off Vernon the night before he was meant to leave because Harry didn’t wake up for two days. His limbs were stiff and sore, and every muscle ached in protest when he got up to make breakfast on the third morning. Aunt Petunia had been furious that she had been cooking for the past two days while Harry ‘lazed around’ and acted like an ‘ungrateful brat’. Harry went to bed with bruises on his hips that night.

But still, he figured he could handle it until he turned seventeen. He spent most of his time away from his uncle, at Hogwarts, he could handle the few weeks he had to spend in Little Whinging. If not he always had a rather large sum of money he could access. He could stay in a hotel if it ever came to it. But he was sure he could handle the waiting, handle the magic.

Only, it turned out, the more dark magic he used, the more he felt the pull in his gut. It was always tempered for a while after he’d used the magic, but the craving was coming back faster. He needed the power.

He wasn’t sure if his friends were oblivious or just didn’t care. No one had brought up his late night excursions, or his late morning rises. He skipped breakfast most days, too tired to get out of bed before he really must to get to his classes on time. He knew he had to go to his classes, whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t afford to get expelled. The magic didn’t have such a strong hold on him yet. He still knew the difference between right and wrong; he knew what he should do and actually cared enough to try. It wouldn’t always be that way.

It was early September when Harry saw his first Unforgivable Curse, not including the one sent at him when he was a baby. Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody showed it to them in Defence Against the Dark Arts. He showed all three of them, actually. In fact, Harry was in such awe of the curses, he didn’t care when Moody singled him out in class. Mentioning ‘The Boy Who Lived’ when talking about the Killing Curse was apparently too good an opportunity to miss.

Harry watched enraptured as Mad-Eye cast Imperio on a spider. His eyes tracked the spider’s unwilling movements around the room as Moody made it do whatever he wanted. He was controlling another being’s mind; Harry had to forcibly stop his jaw from slackening in awe. Harry wanted to try that. He felt like a kid in Disney World. Everything was new and exciting and he wanted to try it all.

The Cruciatus Curse was next. Harry watched as the spider writhed on the front desk and fought to keep the smile off his face. He could do that. He could do that to Uncle Vernon. And, oh, what sweet revenge that would be.

Finally, it was the Killing Curse. The tug in Harry’s gut was tearing at him now, his head and his heart mimicked the feeling, being in such close proximity to dark magic made him want to use it more. More than he ever had. He jumped with the rest of the class when Moody delivered the final blow and the spider lay dead in his hands.

A few weeks later, Harry got an up close and personal experience with the Imperius Curse. In another Defence lesson, Moody decided that to properly prepare them for the world of unforgivable Curses, he had to use one on them. Of course that wasn’t particularly ethical; they are illegal for a reason. But moody couldn’t crucio a student, and he definitely couldn’t kill one, so he settled with ruling their minds for a few minutes.

Harry managed to throw it off.

This time, though, the dark magic felt different to when he used it. It was restricting and oppressing, rather than liberating and thrilling. His mind had buckled beneath the weight of the curse, his limbs had felt heavy and sluggish, his thoughts were not his own and he didn’t like it. It had been suffocating him. He let his rage at the spell build in his mind, laying the anger like a wall and pushing the curse upwards and out until he was free.

It was after this lesson that his use of dark magic increased dramatically. The intervals between his visits to the Forbidden Forest became shorter as time wore on. The cravings grew stronger and stronger. He couldn’t concentrate in class, he wasn’t doing his homework or if he did, it was to such a poor standard that the teachers didn’t even bother reading it and just failed him straight off.

Professor Severus Snape was one such teacher. The Potter Brat had been an irritant since his first day and it had just gotten worse over the years. But this? This was unacceptable. He growled down at the boy’s latest essay, if you could call it that. It was little more than two paragraphs of utter nonsense and illegible scribbles.

Detentions hadn’t gotten any of the teachers anywhere, there was never any guarantee that Harry would actually turn up, and with so many detentions he had received and missed, rescheduling them was becoming something of a problem. At the rate he was going, he’d have detentions into his fifth year by November. But the boy did not seem to care and it was frustrating his poor professors to no end.

Snape contemplated what to do with the boy. Surely this was just a pathetic bid for attention. He should pay it no heed, no matter how annoying the brat was getting, he would not give him the satisfaction of paying him any of the attention it seemed he so desired.

He lent back in his chair and rubbed his temples. He thought he had decided on the matter. He would not indulge the Potter brat. But he had promised Lily he would keep the boy safe, and for his own sanity he needed to do something for the boy.

He stood from his chair and walked to the Great Hall. Breakfast was an unusual time of the day. Students came and went in small trickles, but all of them did come and go. Lunch and dinner were different, most of the students tended to be in all at once.

Snape wouldn’t say that he came to breakfast as early as possible, but he was there before most students, and did stay until the very last minute. So unless he was mistaken, Potter had not shown up for breakfast for over a month at least, unless he’d suddenly started getting up at 6 a.m.

Snape moved his gaze to the Gryffindor table. Ron Weasley and Hermione granger were happily chatting away. They seemed not to notice the absence of their best friend. Or maybe they didn’t care, Snape mused, maybe Potter was not as popular as he had thought the boy was.

He nibbled on the corner of a piece of toast and stared down at students who had done particularly badly on their latest potions essay. A sort of forewarning, he thought. Potter still had not turned up by the end of the meal so Snape moved on and went to his first class of the day.

This would not be the end of it.