Crucio
Cruciatius Curse: an Unforgivable spell (meaning a spell that results in an automatic life sentence in Azkaban if cast willingly) created by Andros Hobgoblin in the year 1836 as a means to torture political prisoners for information. The curse caused immense pain that could drive a person into insanity. The curse was immediately deemed too severe and inhumane and labeled an unforgivable curse.
“Only a monster would create such a spell. I have become the very monsters I was trying to defeat.” —Andros Hobgoblin.
Bill almost kicked down the door when he arrived. He hadn’t even had his breakfast or brushed his hair yet when he received the letter. He’d rolled out of bed and found Errol pecking at his window, giving Bill a look like ‘wake up, sleepy-bones. It’s windy out here.’
The minute he’d read the letter, he’d Apparated on the spot, appearing on the Burrow’s doorstep. Even though he’d been in Egypt for a year, Bill barged into his childhood home as if he’d just been de-gnoming the garden and not several countries away a second before. The door had been left unlocked.
“What in the name of Merlin happened?” Bill asked before he was even fully in the doorway.
His mother was the only one in the kitchen, sitting at the table and drinking a cup of tea. Her hands were shaking so badly, the saucer rattled when she rested the cup on it. She looked up with hope shining in her eyes, but that hope flickered and died when she saw him.
“Oh, Bill,” she said weakly. “I thought you were…” Tears filled her eyes and started to overflow.
Percy. She had hoped he was Percy, Bill realized.
His siblings entered the kitchen, having heard him from the living room.
“Bill, what are you doing here?” Ron asked.
“I got a letter saying Percy was missing,” Bill said. “Would somebody tell me what happened?”
Fred and George exchanged guilty glances.
“Percy ran off,” Ginny answered. “The twins pranked him, and he got mad, so he went to the woods. But then, his clock hand—“
Ginny gestured to the clock, and Bill followed her gaze. His blood chilled when he saw Percy’s clock hand resting resolutely on Mortal Peril. It wasn’t shifting even the slightest amount.
“Dad found a rock with Percy’s blood on it,” Ron said. “The Aurors think he ran away, but—“
“Percy wouldn’t do that,” Bill said. The idea was ludicrous.
“We know that,” Fred said.
“Dad tried to tell the Aurors,” George continued.
“But they wouldn’t listen!” Fred finished.
“Have you tried tracing his magic?” Bill asked.
“Arthur did,” his mother said. “But something’s blocking it or hiding it or something. The Aurors have a trace on Percy’s magic, so if he casts a spell, they’ll know where he is.”
Bill wasn’t even sure where to start with all of this. His siblings being in danger was bad enough, but Percy being in danger was so unexpected. He was always so careful, so cautious. What had happened to him?
“Does Charlie know?” Bill asked.
His mom nodded. “Eroll was instructed to go to Charlie after he dropped off the letter for you. He should know within a few hours.”
Charlie had only been in Romania for a month. Bill had expected Charlie to be similar to him— independent, busy, coming home for holidays. Now, Charlie would be coming home sooner than expected for one of the worst possible reasons.
Bill sat down heavily at the table, not trusting his legs to keep him upright.
Where was Percy?
Percy’s throat was raw from screaming, to the point where he couldn’t even manage a scream anymore. All he could manage were whimpers and sobs.
The Cruciatus Curse hurt so much more than he could’ve ever imagined. His bones were fracturing, breaking, shattering, splintering beneath his skin. Every nerve was lit on fire and electricity surged through his veins, cramping every muscle until they tore from the strain. His blood had turned to acid, scorching his blood vessels and burning him from the inside out.
Percy had never known such pain. He’d never known anything worse than a skinned knee. He understood how this amount of pain could drive someone into insanity. His own insanity might’ve already been crumbling after- was it seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days?- and Percy wasn’t sure how long he could hold the fraying strands of his sanity together.
Percy wanted to say he was strong and brave, like a true Gryffindor, but in that moment, he was a terrified fourteen year old kid. He begged for the pain to stop, said he’d do anything for it to stop. In between spells, Percy pleaded on his knees for mercy.
He wondered if he should feel embarrassed to be begging after such a short time, but he couldn’t feel anything beyond the pain.
The Death Eaters took turns. The Animagus didn’t have a wand, and neither did Fenrir Greyback. Greyback had narrowly escaped Azkaban, but not before his wand was confiscated and snapped. The other two Death Eaters, however, had wands and weren’t afraid to use them to cause as much pain as possible.
The spell halted for the briefest second, and Percy garbled out something like, “Please stop.” Saliva and blood dripped down his chin; he’d bitten his tongue at some point.
“Greyback, you’ve waited patiently long enough,” the more talkative of the Death Eaters said. “Do as you wish. Just don’t kill him or turn him.”
Greyback cracked his knuckles and smiled. “My pleasure.”
Greyback approached Percy, and Percy whimpered.
Greyback lifted up one clawed finger, just as he’d done earlier, and he smirked.
Then, he stabbed the claw into Percy’s side, just beneath his ribcage. Pain blazed through Percy’s side as blood welled up and started to soak through his sweater. Percy tried to scream, but his throat was too raw. All he managed was a choked out sob.
Greyback twisted his claw, and Percy sobbed again. His whole body was in agony, ever muscle sore, every nerve aching.
They wouldn’t stop hurting him. They’d never stop hurting him, Percy realized. Not until they killed him.
“Dad?”
His dad turned from where he was sitting in his shed, tinkering with some Muggle object. He smiled when he saw Percy, only seven years old, standing in the doorway, dragging his favorite blue blanket behind him.
“Hello, Percy. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” His dad asked.
“I had a bad dream,” Percy said, and he walked further into the shed and clambered onto his dad’s lap. His dad held him close, pressing Percy’s head to his chest.
“Well, that’s not good. You wanna talk about it?”
“They came back,” Percy whimpered, “and we had to hide again.”
His dad was quiet for a moment. He knew exactly who Percy was talking about.
The war had ended a little under three years before. Bill and Charlie had almost forgotten about it, just glad to be able to play outside again, but Percy had always been more sensitive and he had a very good memory. Those memories tended to show up in his dreams.
“They’re gone, Percy,” his dad said gently. “And they’re never coming back.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Percy was hiding, squished inside a cabinet that he barely fit in. He was small for a four year old, and the cabinet still barely fit him.
He could hear yelling outside. He recognized a few words— stupefy, protego, diffindo, and another spell his parents told him never to say, not that Percy could pronounce it anyway. It sounded like abracadabra; the first time Charlie said that when they were playing wizards, Percy had screamed and dropped to the floor, hiding under a coffee table.
Where were Bill and Charlie now? They all knew how to hide, had been taught by their parents several times. Percy called it Practice. His mother would say Hide, and they’d scatter like rats to find the best hiding spots.
It had felt like a game until tonight. Tonight, it was serious.
“Croosio!” Someone shouted outside Percy’s hiding spot, and someone screamed.
Percy covered his ears, trying to block out the screams, and he whimpered, rocking back and forth.
He silently begged for it to be over soon. His daddy said he would find him when it was over. Mummy was hiding somewhere with the twins, and Percy longed for her embrace now, for her to hold him and tell him a story or sing a lullaby, anything to distract him from the screams and spells and abracadabra.
“Stupefy!” Someone yelled. Percy recognized the voice, and he slowly lowered his hands from his ears.
“Croosio!” Someone cast, and a scream sounded, one Percy recognized.
Percy didn’t even think before he flung open the cabinet door and tumbled out into the kitchen of the safe house.
“Uncle Fabian!” He cried.
The screaming stopped, and Percy saw Uncle Fabian crumpled on the floor, twitching and shaking. Uncle Fabian looked up in horror.
“Percy, run!” He screamed.
The man in the scary mask faced Percy, and Percy whimpered, wishing he had never left the cabinet.
The man raised his wand right at Percy’s terrified blue eyes.
“Abracadabra,” the man said, but it wasn’t abracadabra at all. There were some Vs in there, but before Percy could figure it out, a green light shot out of the man’s wand, coming straight for him.
“No!” Uncle Fabian screamed, and he ran faster than Percy had ever seen him run, diving in front of Percy.
The green light hit him in the chest, and he fell to the ground with a thump. He didn’t get back up.
The man in the mask sighed. “Well, that works, too. Now, for you,” he said, pointing the wand at Percy again.
“Stupefy!” A voice yelled from the doorway.
The man in the mask dropped to the ground, and the next second, Percy was being scooped up, and the person holding him was running out the door and straight into a battlefield.
The people in the masks were everywhere, casting the croosio and abracadabra spells left and right. Percy recognized a few people from the safe house fighting back. Some people- the masked people and the safe house people alike- were lying on the ground unmoving. The green grass was stained in some areas by red.
Before Percy could get more than a glimpse of the battlefield, though- although a glimpse was enough- it was obstructed by trees as the person holding him ran into the forest.
That’s when Percy realized they were getting farther and farther away from his family, and that’s when he began to struggle. He screamed and beat his tiny fists against the person’s back.
“Percy, it’s okay, it’s me!” The person said.
Uncle Gideon.
Percy stopped fighting.
“Uncle Gideon,” Percy said. “Where are we going?”
“I’m getting you out of here,” Uncle Gideon said. He hadn’t stopped running yet.
“What about Mummy and Daddy? Billy and Charlie and the twins?” Percy asked as the safe house got further and further away.
“I’ll go back for them,” Uncle Gideon promised.
Percy looked over Uncle Gideon’s shoulder and saw a masked person pursuing them, wand raised and at the ready.
“Uncle Gideon, they’re coming!” Percy whispered.
Uncle Gideon ran faster, but it wasn’t fast enough.
“Avracadavra!” The masked person yelled, and the green light hit Uncle Gideon in the back.
Gideon dropped to the ground, right on top of Percy. Percy yelped, and he tried to squirm out from under Gideon, but he was so heavy.
The masked person was getting closer, and Percy knew he had to run. With all of his four year old strength, he pushed at Gideon’s chest, making the smallest gap for him to slip through. Once Percy was halfway out from underneath Gideon, it was easier to drag himself out the rest of the way.
The minute Percy was on his feet, he ran.
He must’ve ran for hours. He was found just after sunrise the next day by a man with a glass eye. Percy had screamed when the man picked him up and apparated them both back to the safe house.
Percy only stopped screaming when he was placed in his mother’s arms.
His mother was sobbing, and she crumpled to the ground with Percy in her arms, holding him so tightly, Percy thought she might break a rib or two, but he didn’t care.
“Uncle Fabian,” Percy managed. “Uncle Gideon.”
His mother stiffened, and she sobbed harder.
Percy never told her the whole story, that both Fabian and Gideon had died to save him. He didn’t want her to know it was his fault. He didn’t want anyone to know.
Percy came back to the present with a scream that grated against his raw throat. Something had wormed its way into his head, and Percy didn’t know what it was, nor did he take the time to figure it out. He grabbed onto it and pushed.
A migraine exploded behind his eyes at the effort of pushing the thing out, but Percy didn’t care. The memory retreated back into the back of his mind, where it would stay, just as it had stayed for ten years.
Percy opened his eyes and found the quieter of the two Death Eaters- Percy only knew it was him because his eyes were brown instead of gray- standing in front of him, a glint of something in his eyes. He looked almost… impressed.
“Kid shoved me out,” the Death Eater said, and Percy realized the thing in his head had been the Death Eater.
“Percy knows Occlumency?” The Animagus asked in surprise.
Percy wished the Animagus wouldn’t call him by his name. It was a reminder that the Animagus knew practically everything about Percy because he’d hidden in the Burrow in plain sight for ten years.
“Nope,” the Death Eater said. “Not as far as I can tell. Just a strong moment of magic.”
“What’d you see?” The other Death Eater asked.
“Oh, nothing much, just the kid getting his uncles killed,” the Death Eater said nonchalantly.
“A Death Eater killed my uncles,” Percy said because that was the truth. It wasn’t Percy’s fault…
Was it?
“And who were they protecting?” The Death Eater asked. “You had one job, kid: hide. And you didn’t. Your uncles paid the price.”
“Wonder if that’s why he’s such a rule follower,” the Animagus said. “He has a panic attack any time he breaks a rule.”
“Probably because the one time he broke a rule, he got two people killed,” the more talkative Death Eater taunted.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Percy burst out. “My uncles died because of people like you! You’re monsters!”
“No,” the talkative Death Eater said, leaning down to Percy’s face. “We kill the monsters, the ones stealing our magic and people like you who help them do it!”
Stealing magic? No one could do that. What on earth was Death Eater talking about?
“Magic can’t be stolen,” Percy said. “The Magic Thief experiments in 1786 proved that.”
The Death Eater turned to the Animagus in confusion.
The Animagus shrugged. “He reads a lot of books.”
“Well, regardless, the mudbloods stole our magic. My family is one of the Sacred 28,” the Death Eater scowled, “the purest of the pure, and they had the nerve to allow mudbloods into the Wizarding World.”
“Magic is not passed through blood,” Percy said. “It’s a natural gift from Merlin. If magic was passed through blood, there wouldn’t be squibs!”
“Squibs are there because bloodlines have been polluted,” the Death Eater said. “We are working to make magic pure again.”
“You’re psychos,” Percy snarled.
Stupid? Yes, but after being tortured for hours on end, Percy’s filter wasn’t exactly working.
The man raised his hand, and Percy flinched, knowing what was coming. A loud SMACK sounded as the back of the man’s hand crashed against Percy’s face. Percy only noticed he was wearing a ring when the ring split the skin across his cheekbone.
“What did we say about backtalk?” The Death Eater said. “Watch your mouth, Weasley, or we’ll let Greyback off the leash.”
Percy quickly shut his mouth.
The Death Eater smirked. Percy couldn’t see it behind the mask, but he could hear it in his voice.
“Good boy,” he said and patted Percy on the head like he was a dog. Percy had the urge to bite the Death Eater but resisted the urge.
The man turned to the other Death Eater. “But I’m growing bored with the Cruciatius. How about we try the new method?”
Percy was confused, but it clicked after a moment.
The quieter Death Eater turned to Percy and said, “Legilimens.”