I watched as Higgs tried to get up, and it only fueled my rage! The thirst to kill! To destroy! But I began to suppress myself with all my might, because the plan had been executed. I had done everything I could, losing control completely at the end, and now it was time to regain it.
But just as I was trying to quell the rage, Higgs decided to anger me even further. Bleeding out, he tried to stand: coughing, spraying blood on the stones, leaning against the wall with trembling hands, he was trying with incredible difficulty to get up, but his back was to me! Abomination! Mordred's spawn! All his gaze was fixed on the spot where his wand, knocked away by the explosion, lay. He wanted to reach his weapon, trying to save himself. I won't allow it!
How pathetic he was! I need to kill him! NO! That's nonsense… breathe in… breathe out. I must not kill… but according to the plan, he wasn't supposed to get up, which means I have every right to maim him!
It's stupid to kill… just maim him, right!? Of course, right!
I didn't even use my wand. I just waved my left hand — a light, almost careless motion — and magic flew from my fingertips like an invisible blade, slicing precisely through the hamstring tendons of Higgs's right leg.
The sound of tearing flesh sounded so pleasant in my ringing ears… bliss! A fountain of dark, venous blood spurted from under his torn robe, covering the stone slabs with a new layer of crimson. Higgs didn't even have time to scream — he just collapsed, cut down like a broken marionette, falling face-first into the dust and blood.
But he didn't give up! That's good! Means I can do more!
Through the pain, through the haze of agony, he reached out with his right hand — the one where the robe was shredded by shrapnel, from under which thick red liquid was already seeping — towards the wand of the unknown Gryffindor, lying only half a meter away. His trembling, blood-soaked fingers scraped at the stone, trying to reach it, grab it… and save himself. I'LL KILL! No one… can defeat me!
I watched him fight for his life, as his last strength went into that pathetic, meaningless movement. His fingers almost touched the wooden handle.
Then I waved again.
This time, I directed the cutting spell at his right arm. The spell, with surgical precision, nearly severed the boy's hand. Tendons snapped, releasing another surge of blood, and Higgs's arm lay limp on the stones.
"Aaaaaah!"
He screamed — finally screamed, desperately, lying in a pool of his own blood! That's what they all deserved… all of them!
The scream turned into a gurgle, into a wheeze, and then into a quiet, hopeless hiss.
I shifted my gaze, for the other unknown Gryffindor, lying right nearby, had stirred. During the fight, I had hit his head pretty hard, and he was clearly in a bad state.
But now he was trying to get up. His body wouldn't obey — his entire back was peppered with stone shrapnel, dozens of fragments sticking out of his torn robe, his back, his shoulders, covering everything in blood. He couldn't get up at all — he just started to crawl. Slowly, like a crushed worm, clawing with his hands and leaving a wide bloody trail behind him. He crawled towards his wand, the one Higgs had been reaching for just seconds ago… and Higgs had already lost consciousness from the pain. Pathetic creatures!
I watched for a moment. He crawled, but I was faster. Peeling myself from the wall, slightly staggering due to the ringing in my ears, I approached the pathetic Gryff, the one who had dared to think himself above me! Above me, damn it! How dare he!
I approached, put my wand to his shoulder… where the shoulder blade was. He started moaning, begging, crying. How pitiful. I hate it!
I began forming a concentrated compressed air ram at the tip of my wand… point-blank.
"Aaaaaaaaah!" The shriek was loud as the explosion in his shoulder sprayed blood and flesh onto my robe and even splattered my face with crimson. And where the wand had been pointing just a second ago, there was now a hole in flesh… and bone.
Take that, you creatures! The Coalition, screw you! Everyone will get theirs… every single one will know despair!
The last one remaining was the furthest away. Yes… the third was Farmus.
STOP! There were four of them!
I froze. I looked around and finally realized that only three remained.
The rage, which had momentarily slipped out of control and I had fallen into fury… was gone. I had cut off my emotions with total suppression. Applying the most effective method. The emotions collapsed into a point and disappeared. Only my cold reason remained.
I stood in the very center of this nightmare and felt something inside slowly, reluctantly, quiet down. It was a dark feeling inside that, even with this emotional suppression, didn't fully disappear, making it clear that it wasn't just emotions overwhelming me, but something more ancient and terrible. But in the end, there were no emotions — the Occlumency method, certainly not the most permissible, left behind only emptiness and a cold, calculating mind. That very mind that suddenly helpfully presented a thought that pierced right through me like another Cutting Curse:
Four. There were four of them!
I remembered that the fourth — had fled before the explosion, practically as soon as the fight started — had disappeared. So much for vaunted Gryffindor friendship… and I, in my rage, had forgotten about him. What a coward.
The curse, suppressed by the emotional void, flared up one last time — but now not at them, but at myself. At my own stupidity. At the fact that in this bloody bath, in this intoxicating madness, I had missed another victim. I had allowed my emotions to overcome my reason. But the ancestral curse, finding no response, retreated back into a state of waiting for my emotions to return.
Idiot. Well… not critical. In theory, this last one had also been hit, and besides, he wasn't even part of their little "Coalition," as they apparently called it.
Did I want them to die? No… according to the plan, they weren't supposed to die. But according to the plan, there was also no explosion. Again, the rage had slipped out of control. I had tried, this time, to turn my Black Rage to my advantage, and it had even worked, until I lost control…
True, the idea to use Bombarda came to me in a feverish state. On the verge of battle frenzy, I recalled my thoughts after the skirmish with Burke and his gang, when Adrian had almost used Bombarda in the corridor. A fleeting conversation with Avery and Warrington back then, about how the consequences could lead to expulsion or Azkaban depending on the outcome. And then my own thoughts about how, regardless of the outcome, if you're the heir of the Malfoy family, the worst would be expulsion or suspension. All of this led my mind to a logical conclusion.
My enraged consciousness thought that instead of inflicting serious injuries with my own skills and getting suspended, or ideally transferred to Beauxbatons, it was better to use Bombarda to be sure.
And now, leaning against the wall, deafened by the powerful explosion in the enclosed space, I understood. Understood that by somehow containing all that stone hell with a wandless barrier — which had cut through the three Gryffindors like a knife through parchment — I had done myself a great service. It was better than having used ordinary spells to bring them to such a state.
The explosion better fit the lie I planned to make the entire school administration believe. But since no one had arrived yet, I needed to do a little more work on Farmus.
Jacob Farmus had been standing closest to the wall at the moment of the explosion, which is why he had been thrown the farthest and received so many wounds that his body now resembled a sieve. Dozens of wounds from stone shrapnel lodged in his body threatened to end his life right there, but one wound pleased my soul especially. It was a deep and particularly nasty one, right along his spine, just above the small of his back.
Since that was the case, let this creature know what it means to get what he deserves… they had decided to teach me a lesson. They allowed themselves to believe they had the right, but the truth is, only I have the right.
I approached the motionless body closely, aimed my wand precisely at the spot, and soon a dark spell, a weakened variant of Sectum, flew from the wand tip and struck his spine, severing the vertebra and rupturing the spinal cord.
A terrible wheeze, like the scream of a wounded animal, echoed through the corridor, hitting the walls and chilling the blood. But not mine, for there was nothing left inside me that could be chilled.
His body arched, convulsed once, twice, and then lay sprawled on the stones, soaking them in a new wave of crimson.
Farmus went still. He wasn't dead — just unconscious, slipped into merciful oblivion — but it was the final touch.
Blood was everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, on the stone chips underfoot, on my robe. Yes, even on my face. Hot, sticky, with a salty, metallic smell that would make normal people's stomachs turn.
That was it. Now, I only had to wait. I leaned my back against the wall and slowly slid down it, sitting directly on the blood-soaked floor. The dust was still settling, covering everything with a gray shroud, mixing with the blood, turning into a dirty mess. My ears rang so loudly I could barely hear my own thoughts. But the plan had worked… well, the first part of the plan.
I looked at the work of my hands. Three broken, maimed, bleeding people who, just minutes ago, had gathered to "teach me a lesson." Higgs with severed tendons in his leg and arm. Farmus with a shattered spine, a torn back, and a pile of shrapnel in his body. The third Gryffindor, the big guy — lay on his back with a hole in his shoulder that I had made with a concentrated burst of magic; he wasn't moving, only blood still oozed from the wound, mixing with the dust on the floor.
I felt neither triumph, nor regret, nor fear. Nothing. Only emptiness.
Well, there were two reasons for joy… even two. The first was obvious: the Plan was proceeding without a hitch. And the second — I had managed to get my own rage under control. In the end, of course, it slipped out of control, but that was my intention. The most important thing was that a simple mantra and deepening my knowledge of Occlumency had allowed me to find a path that would enable me to handle even such a powerful ancestral curse.
So I sat, leaning against the wall, waiting. It was quiet all around, only the drip of blood somewhere — steady, like a metronome counting the seconds of someone else's ebbing life. The dust and blood on my face had long since mixed, drying into a crust on my skin.
The first to peek into the corridor were two boys and two girls — apparently, they had heard the noise and came to check. They froze at the turn, not believing their eyes. One of the girls screamed, covering her mouth with her hands. The boys backed away, then turned and ran back, dragging their companions with them.
Their shouts echoed through the corridors. In any case, about ten minutes after the fight started, two of my decoy people were supposed to have arrived and discovered this scene, but this worked out even better.
However, not even two minutes passed before I heard Filch and the babble of students with him. I still sat against the wall, leaning my shoulder on it, staring into the void before me. My thoughts felt distant and muffled, as if coming from under a thick layer of water.
His shuffling footsteps echoed through the corridor long before he appeared in the doorway. Behind him, panting heavily, trotted his cat and some of the students who had just fled. Apparently, he had been nearby, or perhaps the fleeing Gryffindor had gone for help, not knowing how it would all end… though it was obvious enough.
"Mordred…" Filch exhaled, freezing on the threshold. His gaze darted around the corridor — from the three prostrate bodies to the walls riddled with spells, to the huge crater left by the Bombarda, and to the pools of blood.
Then he saw me.
I sat in the very center of this nightmare, splattered with other people's blood, dust on my robes, and a slight, almost imperceptible smile on my lips that I couldn't wipe away… and why should I?
"It's you!" Filch shrieked, his voice cracking. "You! Bloody butcher! You did this to them all!.. You!.. To Azkaban with him! Immediately to Azkaban! Faster! Over here!"
He jabbed a trembling finger at me, his face reddened, spittle flying in all directions. He screamed while his stupid cat hissed, arching its back and backing away, as if I were the embodiment of death itself.
"I always knew! Always! You're all cut from the same cloth! Murderer! Butcher!"
He screamed and screamed, choking on his own shrieks, his voice bouncing off the walls, mixing with the ringing in my ears, turning into a continuous, unintelligible roar.
I didn't even turn my head. I just sat and stared into the void while Filch poured out his hatred. Inside was empty. Absolutely and crystal clear. No anger, no irritation, no desire to justify myself. Only silence and ringing.
And the growing clamor of the crowd. While Filch screamed, his voice gradually began to drown in another sound — the pounding of many feet approaching from the direction of the main staircase.
Students burst into the corridor. Even more students!
First two, then five, then ten — they flooded in, freezing in the doorway with open mouths and eyes bulging with horror. Someone gasped, someone covered their mouth with their hand, someone just froze, unable to move. They all came running to see what had happened.
"My God…"
"Is that Malfoy?"
"Are they… are they even alive?"
"Blood… look at all the blood…"
Whispers, exclamations, muffled sobs — all merged into a continuous roar, which layered on top of Filch's screams, creating unimaginable chaos. A couple of older students even tried to approach, to do something, but quickly backed off, realizing they were out of their depth.
Then Pomfrey arrived.
She flew into the corridor with a medical bag in one hand and her wand in the other, pushing through students with her shoulder, shoving the too-curious aside. Behind her, almost simultaneously, appeared McGonagall and Snape — they were running, out of breath.
"Out of the way!" McGonagall shouted, and her voice, amplified by magic, rolled down the corridor, making the students flinch aside. "Clear the passage immediately! And go about your business!"
Passing near me, she shouted something, but I was distracted by the roar of voices and didn't hear. In fact, many were trying to shout to me, so with this ringing in my ears, I couldn't make it all out… or perhaps I just didn't want to.
"Madam Pomfrey, over here!" Professor Snape said loudly, already bent over Higgs, who lay in a pool of blood, showing no signs of consciousness.
Pomfrey dropped to her knees beside him, not even noticing that her skirt was instantly soaked with blood. Her wand glided over his body with surgical precision, stopping the bleeding.
"Water! I need clean water!" she shouted, not turning around.
Snape immediately drew his wand and with a few flicks in the air created water, which hovered near Pomfrey in spheres. McGonagall, meanwhile, bent over the third Gryffindor — the big guy with the hole in his shoulder — apparently also stopping the bleeding.
Snape was trying to stabilize Farmus's condition. He lay face down, and his back was such a mess that Snape froze for a moment, assessing the extent of the damage, then exhaled sharply and called Pomfrey, who could better handle such a case.
The students, meanwhile, did not disperse.
They crowded in the doorway and along the walls, as far as space allowed. Their faces were pale, their eyes wide. Someone was crying, someone was whispering, someone just stood and watched, unable to look away from the scene.
"Malfoy did this?" came another trembling whisper from those who had just arrived.
"Shh! He can hear…"
"Unbelievable… they're upper-years…"
"And he's sitting there smiling! Do you see? He's smiling!"
I was indeed smiling. It seemed to frighten them more than the pools of blood on the floor.
Filch, all the while, hadn't stopped screaming in the background:
"I told you! I always told you! He's a bloody Mordred's spawn! To Azkaban with him! Immediately to Azkaban!"
"Shut up, Mr. Filch!" McGonagall barked, not even turning around. "If you can't help — get out!"
But Filch didn't leave. He kept standing and screaming, his voice mixing with the hum of the students' whispers, with the professors' commands, with the groans of the wounded, creating an unimaginable noise.
And I sat against the wall and watched it all, understanding that the total suppression of emotions was no longer working and I was starting to get angry. That's why I retreated into my own thoughts and just kept repeating the mantra over and over:
Am I a dumb beast? Will anger make me great? Isn't the king of beasts just prey for man? Aren't the strongest monsters just ingredients for a wizard?
I am a man, not a beast. I am a wizard, not a monster.
I closed my eyes. For a few seconds — just not to see all of it. Then I opened them.
Can I rise above all others by being a mad monster?
The ringing in my ears and distant, barely audible groans.
You cannot achieve what you dream of if you submit to anger. Think, Arcturus. Think!
At some point, Snape approached me. By then, I already knew they were carrying the wounded away… to the hospital wing, apparently. Oh, even Flitwick had arrived… I wonder what he thought when he saw me here…
Snape turned from the wounded, straightened up, surveyed the corridor — the walls riddled with spells, the huge hole from the Bombarda, the pools of blood, the crowd of students — and only then did his gaze stop on me.
I looked up at him. Met that black, impenetrable gaze and didn't look away.
"Mr. Malfoy," Snape's voice rang out clearly, cutting through all the chaos. As if nothing had happened. "Are you injured?"
I looked at him for a long second. Maybe two.
"No, Professor," I replied evenly. "I'm fine. Thank you for your concern."
He stared at me for a few more moments. And what did he see there? A bloodied, empty-eyed third-year sitting in a pool of someone else's blood? Or something else, something hidden behind that icy mask?
I finally stood up, leaning on the wall, and cracked my neck slightly. Then I just started watching as these proud, arrogant men were carried away in such a state. And my smile, because of that… only grew wider. Only one thing marred my light, slightly joyful smile… Filch and his screaming.