Chapter 5.

Chapter 5

The Nightmare Man

Summary: In the depths of the Ministry, there is a cell for the world's most dangerous man… and he wants out.

Pairing/s: None.

Warnings: Time travel, OOC-characters, Light!bashing, Twisted!Harry, Evil!Harry, violence, mention of gore. Yeah, stuff like that.

Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter nor do I make any money writing this.

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Edited 2020

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Chapter Five

Sitting on Cornelius' desk was now four boxes. Four boxes was all the information that the Ministry had found on this Nightmare Lord.

The boxes had been found after Albus managed to contact one of the guards that were not on shift. The headmaster had gotten an idea of who could have done the attack at the Ministry, but needed confirmation. The guard had taken them down to the Nightmare Lord's prison. Already when they came out of the elevator they knew something was wrong. The smell of blood was in the air. They rushed to the long hall with cell, only to find one guard dead, and the stone chair empty, the chains laying broken on the ground.

Albus had immediately informed the rest of the Order as well as the able Aurors of the Nightmare Lord's existence, and that the attack at the Ministry was most likely done during his escape.

Lily Potter came to a stop next to him. For the moment they were alone in the room.

"Why would they hide such a man underneath the Ministry?" she said. "What were they thinking?"

Her hands were clenched. She knew some of the people who had died and insisted on helping, leaving her son in the care of the Weasley family at one of the Order's safe houses. They had brought Hermione and her parents from the Muggle world as well, to keep them safe.

But Lily wasn't the only one who had known someone who did. They all knew someone who had died a painful death today. Albus sighed and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I don't know, Lily. But hopefully the information here will tell us why."

"It's not much," she said. "If it's a Dark Lord, I mean. We have more information about Voldemort than all of this. How long was he a prisoner there?"

"I've only known about him for less than a day. I haven't had a chance to read any of this."

Lily nodded. She opened one of the boxes. The parchments inside had all been preserved, yet still a few looked ready to fall apart in her hands. Lily's eyes widened and she said:

"Albus, these are dated… they're dated from centuries ago!"

"What?"

"Look here. It's 1628… and here, 1544! They are… how can he be this old?"

"Cornelius mentioned some things that made it known this lord was older than he looked. But I thought it more speculation, or that Cornelius wanted to make the man seem more terrifying."

"How old did he look like?" Lily asked.

"He looked younger than James. Only his eyes seemed older."

A knock on the door, and then James, Sirius and Remus filed into the room.

"So this is what they have on this guy?" James asked, looking at the boxes.

"James, are you alright?" Lily asked.

"Yes, it's just… how could he kill so many, with so little effort? The Aurors, they were trained to fight, and yet he just… he just killed them."

"Yes, which is why it's important we read all of this to try and understand our new enemy," Albus said.

"You really believe he's as old as Fudge claimed?" Sirius said. "People don't live that long while looking so young!"

"I'm afraid what little we've seen so far begs to differ," Albus replied.

"First Voldemort, and now this bloke," James said.

"Bloke is the wrong word," Lily said.

They all looked at her.

"What is it?" James asked.

"This is not an official Ministry parchment. It's just a story about the Nightmare Lord."

"And?"

"It's dated before the founding of Hogwarts," she said and looked at them. "If this is true, the Nightmare Lord is over a thousand years old."

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What I have seen is still hard to take in. It is not something that should exist in our world. I swear on the life of my children I am not a madman, or seeking to make rumours. This is the truth. May these words be save, so it will be known to those after me what I have faced.

Wars have been fought by Muggles for forever, it seems, but I never held great interest in them. One such battle happened near my home. Weapons and such that were left behind had some value, and so I set out to collect some. A man in my age must think of what he leaves behind, to not leave his children without anything to their names.

When I came there, someone had already made it to the battlefield. I was naturally disappointed, until I saw he had not touched the weapons and jewellery. He was doing strange things with his hands, strange even for a wizard such as myself, but I paid him no mind. I hoped to get some things from the battlefield without him taking much notice of me.

That was when it began. The slain bodies on the ground began to move before my very eyes. They dragged themselves up and opened their eyes, but they were not alive once more. They were still dead. Still corpses. Some did not have all their limbs, yet they moved anyway. Others had bled, their wounds grave, and yet they moved.

But they did not walk like men. They moved in a strange fashion, dragging their feet, heads rolling on their feet. They all moved towards the man.

I had heard of stories, where people used magic to make dead men walk but I never imagined I would see it with my own eyes. I thought, up until that very moment, that men like him were merely tales to scare children at night to keep them inside.

As the dead gathered around him, I took my chance to escape. But an arm took a hold of me, and I fell. Of course the man had seen me all along, and the dead parted to let him walk towards me.

He moved his hand, and the arm let me go. Those eyes, those bright eyes stared into my very soul. I could scarcely draw a breath as he looked at me. Then he smiled. I had heard those Muggle folks speaking of a devil, and for the first time I believed them. Only this one was a wizard, one of my own kind. A devil who rose the dead from their rest.

He let me escape. Perhaps to tell this tale. Perhaps because my running amused him. Perhaps for no reason at all. But I saw evil that day. I saw a nightmare.

No, the lord of nightmares. The nightmare lord.

Lily stopped reading.

"When was that?" Sirius said.

"This parchment states this as a copy of the original story," she said. "It was written, on this parchment, in 1189, so the incident is before that."

"We need to read all of this," Albus said.

"A thousand years old," James said. "How has he survived that long? He looked younger than us!"

"There are ways to stay alive," Albus said. "Good and bad ways. Nicholas Flamel found a good way, may he now rest in peace. But I do not think this lord used the same method. Now, let's not waste our time."

They began to take out parchments and folders, spread them out and sorted them by the centuries. When that was done, they had a few dating back well before Hogwarts, and even more before the Ministry was formed in the early 1700s. In fact, aside a few official Ministry documents, there was hardly anything about him after the British Ministry of Magic came to be.

"Still, it's not much," James said. "We have more on Voldemort."

"He's a present enemy," Albus said. "The Nightmare Lord was imprisoned before the birth of the Ministry, so centuries have passed since anyone was exposed to him. They have forgotten his existence."

"Well, what happened here today was a rather painful reminder of the man."

"Let's hope there something amongst this that will tell us how to stop it from happening again," Albus said.

"Where's Snape by the way?"

"He's gone back to the school. The injured was already on their way to St Mungo's, so I think he was going to make some potions to send over to them as quickly as possible."

"I can see the comment coming," Lily warned, "and don't you dare utter it, James. Severus is a good man. It's time you grew up and stopped harbouring childish resentment."

James clenched his jaws but didn't speak further.

"That applies to you too Sirius," she continued. "You two are a bad influence on Harry and his friends."

"He's a bat," Sirius said.

"An evil one."

"He's not evil," Lily maintained as she picked up a few folders. "So stop it. He's on our side."

James snorted.

"James," she said. "Please. Severus is not an evil man."

"Yeah? Look at his left arm and tell me again."

"He was young and made a mistake!"

"Severus turned back to the right side," Albus said, holding his hands up. "He is not in league with Voldemort, James, you know that. Now please… let's focus on this."

They all began to read and tell each other what they found.

The earliest source was not the one Lily had read. It was a short note, written years before the story Lily read and didn't say much. It only described the destruction of a village, and the man believed responsible. It fitted the Nightmare Lord's description.

After those two more stories and notes about him began to appear. It didn't take long before he was known for being people's worst nightmare, and the fear of him made them start chasing after him.

But the Nightmare Lord also conducted hunting. Only he made a sport out of hunting Muggles, sometimes killing them while sometimes only scarring them for life. He terrorized them, and magical people who spoke in favour of Muggles often faced his wrath.

"He seems to have invented Muggle hunting," James said. "Albus, are you sure Voldemort doesn't know about him? At least about this, because it feels like I'm reading about the Death Eaters."

"I'm not certain how many knew of his existence outside of the minister and his trusted people," Albus replied, "but this nightmare lord certainly has made an impression, whether he intended it or not."

Records told them how people began to put a price on his head so that he was hunted with the intent to have him killed. Countless people set out for the task, but few ever returned to tell the tale. Those who did were never the same, and they couldn't function normally according to reports, which made them all shudder at the thought what the Nightmare Lord had done towards those people.

"Holy shit," Sirius said after a while. They looked up at him. "This is unbelievable. This guy is worse than Voldemort. Hell, he's worse than Grindelwald!"

"What is it?" Remus asked.

"It says here a village announced there would be a reward if the Nightmare Lord was brought to justice, and his head taken to the village. You've read up to us, Remus, about people putting a price on his head but a whole village had gone out with this. A few days later the Nightmare Lord came to the village in person, killed all but one who then could tell the tale to others, and burnt the village to the ground."

"A whole village?" James said. "How many people?"

"Almost a thousand people lived there," Sirius replied. "He killed a thousandpeople, how can one person even manage that?"

"He had no aid?" Albus asked.

"Let me see here… wait, there's more… it's what the survivor told someone… alright, this is what he said: The lord did not act alone, but his allies are not something I have ever seen before in my life. The lord came to our village wearing a cloak, a material so dark it took away all colour. When we all prepared to take him on, the lord merely took off his cloak and put it down on the ground. There was a depth in the fabric that made my heart clench in fear but by that time it was already too late; the people of my village charged, ready to fight him. That was when the beings came out of the darkness, as if a portal had opened inside the fabric. There beings wore black garbs and had no eyes, only gaping mouths. They could not be harmed. They took away the warmth, and the joy, and finally, they took away my friends' souls."

"Dementors," Albus realized. "He destroyed that village with the aid of Dementors."

"Didn't the minister say he was the creator of Dementors?" James said.

"Yes. The Nightmare Lord created them. Was there anything else, Sirius?"

"Let me see." He scanned the parchment. "I don't know if you want to hear it."

"We'll have to," Lily said. "So not to underestimate the man."

Sirius launched into it:

"He used neither wand nor staff. His magic was heavy and oppressing. I nearly choked when I felt it. I had never experienced such evil. The way he killed those I loved was not gentle, nor kind. As I pleaded for the life of my child, her life for mine, he seemed to consider it. What he did was only prolonging my suffering, for he seemed to have no remorse tearing her apart in front of me. When I asked why he was doing this, his answer was only this: 'This is simply what people like me do when we are bored.'"

"That's horrible," Lily said. "Why didn't they just kill him?"

"He said they couldn't," James answered. "This lord, he told us that. They couldn't kill him so they locked him up. I can't believe that they actually built the Ministry on top of his prison."

"I can't believe he escaped so easily," Sirius said. "I mean, he was locked up for hundreds of years!"

"One of the guards is missing," Albus said. "I've seen in a few of these papers that the Nightmare Lord seems to have a knack for mind control if the mind is left unshielded."

"So while we were talking to him, he took control of one of the guards?" Sirius said. "And we didn't notice a thing?"

"It would seem that way."

"That is just really creepy," he added. "I mean… I'm not saying you do notice when someone mind-controls someone else, it's just that he used no spell, made no eye-contact as far as I remember… I mean, he could've controlled anyone of us!"

"He could have, but he wouldn't," Albus said. "Because we couldn't bring him to the surface. His aim was a guard all along. I wonder how long he had been planning his escape…"

"But he's just one man," James said. "One single man. There must be something he can't do. He must have some sort of weakness…"

"Everyone has a weakness," Albus reassured. "However, these papers don't seem to give us an answer to that just yet. We just have to figure it out ourselves."

"Do you really think he has any weaknesses?" Lily said, holding several parchments. "He's a monster. This is a list."

"A list of what?"

"A list of Muggle villages that he claimed to have destroyed," she said. "Albus, he didn't just do that. You heard some of the reports we read up. He hunted Muggles for… for fun. He terrorized them, and killed them as if they were animals… how can this much cruelty be contained within one single person? Is he even a person anymore?"

"But he was captured," Sirius stressed. "He was actually caught."

"They tried to kill him," Remus said. "Not catch him. He just shook the spells off as if they were water, and put up little resistance when they did capture him instead. This is one of the official documents retelling his imprisonment."

"He didn't resist?"

"Maybe he was bored and wanted to see what they actually would do if they did catch him," Remus tried with. "The chain he was wrapped up in wasn't able to fully lock away his magic, but he sat there for years before showing that."

"It still doesn't make sense," Albus said. "He let himself get caught and imprisoned for so many years, when it took so little to set him free. Why?"

James found one of the official Ministry documents, and said:

"He was left alone for long periods of times. Many of the guards never even opened the door. So, he couldn't possess them and from the looks of the chains, he needed someone to help him get them off."

"By questioning him it was made possible for him to escape," Lily realized.

"We didn't know it would turn out this way," Albus said. "Has anyone of you found trial papers or the like? He must have had a trial."

"I think I saw something like that," James said and started shifting through the papers. "The old English is a bit hard to understand but that paper was written in a more modern style."

"I would imagine an early form of our modern English, considering the time-period he was captured."

"Aha, here!" James handed Albus a few parchments.

There was a heavy silence as Albus read through them.

"He made no moves to prove himself innocent of the crimes the people accused him of," the headmaster began. "It would seem, as it's written down as a side-note, he was rather enjoying it."

"Enjoying what? The attention?"

"Being the evil one in the room," Albus corrected Lily's enraged remark. "At the time, Azkaban did not exist as a prison, but they had the underground cells. They took away all the other prisoners, placed them elsewhere and made it so the only prisoner there would be the Nightmare Lord."

"All because they couldn't kill him," Lily said. "Did they even try?"

"Lily dear, it says here he took an Avada Kedavra to the chest, and laughed. I'm rather sure they knew they couldn't kill him."

"So they just decided to lock him up forever?" Remus asked.

"Seems that way," Albus replied, putting the parchments down. "Obviously it didn't work out in the end."

"Obviously," James echoed. "So… what the hell are we supposed to do now?"

There was no answer.

To be continued…