Harry Potter the Sorcerer Supreme - Chapter 15 - ... Corrupts ... (Patreon)

Chapter 15: The Darkhold: … Corrupts …

When Harry opened his he eyes he froze in shock, realizing that he was not at the top of Stark Tower as he had planned but rather, he stood on top of a mountain top, snow falling from the sky which was coating the terrain around him.

The unexpected shift in his apparition destination left him disoriented for a moment and caused him to instinctively try to bring the Darkhold up to his chest, eager for the sense of comfort … and the sense of power he got from holding it. However, as he started bringing his hands up, he eyes opened even further realizing there was nothing in his hands.

Panic crept into his mind at the disappearance of the book, as he frantically started looking around on the ground for the Darkhold. How long this continued for Harry was not sure but slowly he began to calm down as both the panic and desire … the need to hold the Darkhold dissipated. After several more moments he remembered the words from the man in Momentum Labs and realized that the book might have been influencing him.

Shivering slightly and shaking his head with disgust at the memory of what he had felt towards the man, and indeed anyone else in the building, once he had grabbed the Darkhold and then what he had done to the building, Harry looked around quickly trying to determine where he was. While he was no expert in America geography, he was fairly certain there were no mountain ranges this close to New York City. Eventually he slumped his shoulders, dejected by having absolutely no hints as to his location beyond the fact that he was clearly not around New York city any longer.

Unsure if he was able, he closed his eyes, summoned his focus, and attempted to apparate back to somewhere familiar, however even before he opened his eyes, he felt the same biting wind from moments before and when he opened his eyes, he was met with the same bleak mountainous landscape he’d been looking at before he closed his eyes.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Harry attempted to gather his thoughts and come up with a plan.

As he quietly thought over everything, he could feel a subtle feeling within him, a faint … darkness that made him feel uncomfortable even though thankfully it was fading.

With it’s decline Harry was beginning to feel more normal, a semblance of clarity and relief returning to him … but yet he couldn’t deny, nor completely shake, the lingering pull, the temptation to seek out the Darkhold again, to hold it in his hands, to feel its power coursing through him.

As he scanned the surroundings again, knowing that at the very least he should get out of the blowing snow, his eyes opened in surprise as the wall of falling snow in front of him seemed to completely die down allowing his gaze to fall upon the imposing silhouette of a castle, its ancient looking spires reaching towards the sky.

Despite its ominous appearance, and against his better judgement, Harry felt an irresistible urge drawing him towards the castle. A pull that he recognized almost immediately. He knew almost without a doubt that the Darkhold must be within the castle, and it was as if the very essence of the book called out to him. Promising him secrets, knowledge, … power beyond anything that even Dumbledore or Voldemort had ever possessed, … skills that they could only ever dream of.

Deep down, he knew the danger that awaited him within those walls, remembering how easy it had been to stop caring about people once he had first picked up the book, shuddering at what he would turn into with prolonged contact or the ability to read more of material contained within the book, shivering at the thought of havoc he could be capable of with the book. Yet the allure remained, a constant whisper in the back of his mind … in the very corner of his soul, tempting him to enter the castle and find the book, whispering of all the greatness he would be capable of. Knowing that he would be able to do great things – terrible, but great.

Shaking his head, Harry turned around, away from the castle. However, he hadn’t even taken a step forward before he heard a faint voice echo from behind him, a voice … that sound familiar.

“You will not be able to leave Mount Wundagore alive without first coming into the Darkhold Castle …”

Startled, Harry spun around … to be greeted by no one.

Looking back up towards the castle he once again felt a feeling beckoning him towards the castle. With some difficulty he managed to turn away and start down the path away from the castle, however he had scarcely made it fifteen paces before part of the path, directly where he was about to place his foot, broke away from the mountain, disappearing into the fog several hundred feet below.

After several more attempts to walk away from the castle ended prematurely, each attempt stopped by some unexplainable natural phenomena, Harry found himself unable to ignore the obvious fact that he would need to overcome whatever force was drawing him towards the castle, as with each step he took away from the castle the whispers grew louder, the promises more enticing. With each obstacle he overcame another one would just immediately pop up.

Eventually, he shook his head again unable to shake the feeling that he likely had no choice but than to head up to the castle before he was able to find a way off the mountain and hopefully eventually find a way back to civilization.

As he ascended the path towards the castle, Harry cast a warming spell to ward off the biting cold that permeated the air and seemed to get worse as he approached the castle. However, while he appreciated the protection from the cold, he realized that a majority of the chills he had been feeling, including the ones that he felt making their way down his spine had nothing to do with the cold, but rather the ominous presence of the castle itself.

At last, he reached the towering gates of the castle, the iron bars rusted and twisted shut with age.

“Bombarda!” Harry cast, smiling for a moment at the sight of the gates blasting open, before the smile quickly evaporated, his face returning to the serious expression.

With a sense of trepidation, Harry carefully stepped over the fallen gates and into the shadowed courtyard, immediately feeling his sense of anxiety increase, noticing that the air seemed to think with a scent of … well … evil.

As he walked towards the heart of the castle, Harry felt a sense of darkness closing in around him, one that felt both worrying and yet exhilarating, one that seemed to feed that little bit of darkness that Harry had felt within him, that had previously been shrinking.

Coming alongside the castle’s walls as he approached a large set of stairs that appeared to lead to the heart of the castle, he felt the weight of darkness seem to increase. Stories of madness and despair seemed to be whispered into his ears from every direction, and while he wanted to discount them as just figments of his imagination, he couldn’t fully discount the fact that they seemed to be actual memories associated with the Darkhold.

Harry eventually finished climbing the central staircase into what seemed to have once been the largest and grandest room of the castle, one that had originally been meant to have been an interior room. However, the walls and a section of the roof had long since collapsed, leaving the space exposed to the elements … although as compared to the mountaintop outside the castle, no sow had settled in the room.

As he stepped cautiously into the chamber, his eyes swept over the remnants of what seemed to have been a place of significance.

As he eyes scanned the walls, his breath caught in his throat, recognizing the writing and symbols etched onto the walls, recognizing some of the words as eerily familiar, similar to pages he had seen in the Darkhold.

But as he continued to study the walls, he noticed that there was something different about what was written here, something darker and more sinister than what he remembered from the book.

His heard pounded in his chest as he felt himself being drawn to the writing, his eyes scanning the script and memorizing it against his wishes. The longer he stared the more he noticed that the words seemed to twist before his very eyes, revealing new verses, histories, spells, and rituals … all of which Harry felt were best left unknown.

But then, as he neared the wall, as if drawn by a force he didn’t see or hear, his gaze was drawn to the center of the room, instantly recognizing the book that was floating there at about shoulder height.

The Darkhold.

The books leather-bound cover seemed to both absorb all the shadows in the area while also pulsate with a dark light, which cast its own eerie shadows across the room.

For a moment, Harry hesitated, his mind warring with itself as he grappled with the temptation to reach out and claim the book once more … desiring the feeling of the power of the book again. But knowing that deep down, knowing that if he grabbed the book again, he might once again fall under its sway, remembering the sight of Dr. Bauer looking up at him with fear in his eyes.

Knowing that he needed to resist the pull of the book, no matter how strong its hold upon him, he refocused his attention on the room in front of him, prepared to turn around and try to leave the room, but he froze in shock.

Apparently unconsciously, he had made his way across the length of the room and his outstretched hand was extended hovering only a couple inches from the book.

It felt like the better part of an hour, but eventually Harry managed to overcome the warring feelings within himself and lower his outstretched arm, feeling as though it was being lowered through syrup not the air. Releasing a deep breath of air as he finally managed to lower his arm, he forcefully made himself take a step backwards, releasing another breath due to the exertion of the action.

Looking back up, Harry felt his eyes once again drawn to the Darkhold, however this time he was prepared for the pull. Shaking his head he forced himself to take another step backwards, feeling a significant decrease in the force pulling him towards the book.

As he took the next step backwards his eyes opened in shock seeing one of the shadows that seemed to originate from the book gain in both size and depth, before it seemingly separated from the book and crawled over to the wall, getting lost among the natural shadows over there.

Harry shook his head trying to see where the shadow had disappeared to, his attention finally having been completely drawn away from the Darkhold.

Hearing the sound of a foot scuffing against the rock floor, Harry reacted immediately, spinning in the direction of the sound as he dropped to one knee and opened his mouth to call out a spell …

… however, the spell dies in his throat, left completely uncase as he saw the figure that walked forward from the darkness between two pillars.

“What …” Harry uttered. “It … can’t be. You can’t be real.”

Shaking his head, Harry looked back to the guy who had emerged from the shadows, instantly recognizing the slight smirk on his face … the untamed hair … and the vivid green eyes that were looking back at him.

--- HP --- Marvel --- HP --- Marvel --- HP --- Marvel --- HP --- Marvel --- HP ---

Harry shook his head again, staring at his doppelganger in shock, unable to look away.

“What are you?” He asked. “You can’t be real.” He repeated.

Staring at his twin, Harry watched as the smirk grew. Although as the smirk was growing, Harry began to notice slight differences between them. The green eyes which he had instantly recognized had a much harder look in them and lacked any trace of the smile that was on the lower portion of his face. And the smile itself felt off … certainly wasn’t a smile he couldn’t imagine he’d ever worn. A smile darker than anything he’d ever seen Draco wearing, a smile he imagined would look more at home on Voldemort’s face when torturing someone.

Harry was torn from his musings by the sound of a derisive snort as his twin shook his head. “Well, it was always clear that you were never as smart as Hermione, but I thought even you’d be able to figure this one out. I’m you, Harry.”

Harry’s eyes opened as he fought to contain a chill that ran down his spine at the sound of the voice coming from the other end of the courtyard.

“That’s not possible … you can’t be me … you have to be some form of alien who can appear like someone else … at least I’m assuming that based on everything I’ve seen since I’ve been here that is something that could happen … or you have to be using this world’s version of a glamour charm or Polyjuice potion …” He trailed off, seeing his twin shaking his head as he begun laughing.

“No, Harry, nothing so elaborate. The fact that I recognized those references should make it obvious. I’m you, I have all your memories. Every time Duddykins picked on you, every time you thought of your dead parents, every time someone you cared about got hurt or killed. I’m you. It’s as simple as that. Besides could someone who wasn’t actually you do this?”

Harry had been so shocked at his twin’s appearance and what he had been saying that he was slow to react, when he saw a familiar sickly jet of red light shoot forward from his doppelganger.

He attempted to spin out of the way, but it was a case of too little, too late. The curse hit him at the same time he heard the sound of the curse reach his ears.

“Crucio!”

The pain from the torture curse dropped him to his knees as the pain wracked his body, causing his limbs to tremble.

However, unlike the times when Bellatrix or Voldemort had hit him with the spell, this felt less like every nerve was being soaked in acid and more like he was being dropped into a boiling pot of water, painful to be sure but magnitudes less painful than what he had experienced before.

Forcing his trembling limbs to stop he slowly regained his feet, looking over to his doppelganger who was staring at him angrily as he ended the curse, obviously upset that Harry was seemingly able to shrug off most of the effects of the spell.

“How …” Harry began, unable to stop the slight tremble in his voice, an aftereffect of the pain he was still feeling. “Ok, how are you here? Obviously, this is more than some item just granting you my appearance …”

Harry watched as his doppelganger’s gaze briefly shifted off to the side, towards where the Darkhold still floated, before looking back to him and beginning. “When you had grabbed the Darkhold in Momentum Labs it sought to corrupt you … as it does to all living souls who come into its vicinity. And though it apparently failed to fully corrupt you … its seeds have been sown …” he said with a dark laugh. “However, as an added benefit, when it was working on corrupting you … it found a fragment of something within you … something already dark … something it liked. Something it helped nurture while corrupting you. Something … that gave birth to me.”

Harry’s eyes opened in shock as his hand slowly made its way up to his forehead, an action which caused his evil twin to smile. “Correct in one. Maybe there is hope for you yet. Apparently when Voldemort cast the Killing Curse on you, it destroyed the horcrux that was residing in your head, however that thing had been sitting within you for years. It had more than enough time to leave behind an imprint … soul magic is incredibly powerful in our world just as it is in this. And it was that imprint that gave rise to yours truly.” He finished with a flourish of his arms before he dipped his head in a mock bow.

Harry silently cursed Voldemort and the fact that he was still making his life a living nightmare, even after killing Harry and resulting in him ending up on another world. Shaking his head he looked back to his doppelganger who had remained standing where he had been, the smile having grown on his face.

The doppelganger looked over to the Darkhold again before glancing back to Harry. “I think the book ‘wants’, if I can describe it like that, to still corrupt you as it believes that the two of us working together would be a force that this world, and all others, wouldn’t be able to defend against … but personally I’d prefer … to just kill you now.” With that he unleashed a familiar looking green hued curse to where Harry was standing.

This time however, Harry was prepared and was already in motion by the time the curse was cast, diving behind one of the columns as the killing curse flew by harmlessly more than an arm’s length away.

Harry quietly made his way to another pillar, laughing for the first time since he had arrived here. “I’d be more frightened of you if you could actually aim a spell, I honestly doubt I’ve been that inaccurate casting spells since my first year … I’m honestly not seeing how you could have come from my and Voldemort’s magic. Are you sure things didn’t go horribly wrong … and maybe you got your memories from one of Crabbe or Goyle …” Harry trailed off, smiling to himself at the yell of rage coming from behind a clump of pillars in the room, which were heading in the direction of the last location Harry had been.

He didn’t have to wait long, until his doppelganger chose to make his move, jumping from his cover and facing directly at the spot where Harry had previously been hiding, freezing in surprise at the lack of his opponent cowering there.

This pause ended up being his downfall as it presented Harry with an unprotected view of his back.

“Ossio Confractus, Ossio Confractus.”

Casting two bone breakers at his doppelganger’s legs, Harry only cringed slightly at the sound of the bones painfully breaking combined with his cry of pain coming from someone else’s mouth, as his look-alike dropped to the ground no longer able to support himself.

Without giving him a chance to recover, he cast Silencio and Immobulus, smiling at he watched his opponent freeze and the sound of his cries of pain stop.

Walking over to him, Harry waved as he looked down on him, before walking by, looking up towards the Darkhold. Immediately he felt the feelings of darkness washing over him began. Being prepared this time Harry shook his head and looked back to his doppelganger. “Well … fake Harry …” he paused and smiled, seeing the murderous look of anger in his evil twin’s eyes, before continuing on, “… I have a feeling that I’d like to have a chat with you once we are safely out of this castle. However, … I can’t shake the feeling that it’d be unsafe to try and bring this book with me … as much as I want to.”

With that, he turned back to the Darkhold, taking a deep breath to collect himself, he stared at it and called out Bombarda Maxima.

Smiling at the sight of the spell racing towards the book he almost looked back to his evil twin … however he was lucky as he was still looking at the book as the spell seemed to come to a complete stop inches from connecting with the book, before rebounding towards Harry even faster than it had headed to the book.

Caught almost completely by surprise, Harry barely had time to try and backpedal, watching as the spell impacted less than a foot in front of him. Even though Harry had managed to avoid getting directly hit from the spell, the concussive impact of the spell colliding with the ground was severe enough that it launched Harry backwards, causing him to collide back-first with the far wall about halfway up the wall, before falling the four feet to the floor, immediately crumpling to the ground.

He wasn’t sure how long he laid there in pain, trying to prevent himself from blacking out while unsuccessfully willing his limbs to move before a shadow covered his vision, blocking the filtered light that had been streaming in from outside.

Forcing his eyes to focus, he was met with his own face staring down at him, the ugly smile of his doppelganger back on his face. “Well now … you have to admit, that was foolish … even for you.” He paused glancing through the gap in pillars behind him towards where the Darkhold was floating before glancing back to Harry, a displeased look on his face. “Although perhaps now is not the time to kill you. The more corrupted your soul gets, whether by the Darkhold’s influence or some other force, the stronger I get.”

He leaned in closer almost whispering. “But we are not done yet, I will kill you.” Leaning back, he raised his hand, resting his palm on Harry’s forehead, “But until then … while I’m perfectly happy with you knowing that I’ll be out here with the Darkhold getting stronger, I don’t need you to know where we are.” With that, he withdrew his hand, holding a memory strand between his fingers which he then dispelled.

Smiling back at Harry, as he leaned towards him once more. “By the way … if you call me fake Harry … or even just Harry for that matter, I will kill you before the book has it’s chance to corrupt you.”

With that he leaned back before his fist shot forward, connecting with Harry’s nose as hard as Harry assumed he had been able to.

From the cracking sound, pain, and feeling of liquid flowing down his mouth Harry was fairly certain his doppelganger had broken it.

As the pain gave way to blackness which began to cover his vision and he felt him slipping into unconsciousness, he heard a voice calling out to him, echoing as if down a long tunnel.

“You can call me Tom.”

Kind Regards,

FavoriteAuthor

Up Next: The Darkhold: … Absolutely

Story Note – Did Harry just manage to guess as to the existence of the Skrulls!

Story Note 2 – Many of you had been asking about the horcrux in Harry’s head. And saved any concrete answers for this chapter. So the horcrux has been destroyed by Voldemort’s killing curse. However, I had a feeling that a piece of magic that dark would leave an imprint on a living soul due to being in contact with them for such an extended period of time. We saw how it affected people’s behavior if they held it for a couple hours imagine the damage it would do if it was stuck in your forehead. As a result of the imprint it left behind when the Darkhold began to corrupt Harry it came in contact and managed to give birth to ‘Fake Harry’ … oops I meant Tom. When Harry chose to ignore the Darkhold in the castle this allowed Tom to detach from the Darkhold and Harry, becoming his own identity and like Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets it will get stronger.

Story Note 3 – This is certainly not the last we will see of Tom, who shall end up becoming a bit of a recurring character (appearing or being mentioned in several of the arcs) until their final fights. And while Harry will not spend every chapter dedicating himself to finding Tom or Darkhold Castle again, it is not because he doesn’t think it is important. It is because he knows that while Tom was easy to fight he wasn’t strong enough to destroy the Darkhold and he will need to be prepared if Tom does get stronger.

Disclaimer – It has come to my attention recently that I unfortunately do not own any part of Harry Potter or the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the characters that belong to those entities. One can dream I suppose. Although I did buy a ticket to Disney World one time.