The Purge

By popular request, I have decided to make my one-shots "The Purge" and "The Purge 2: Culled" into a full fic. Originally, I had thought to leave them as just plot-bunnies my brain spewed out, but there was enough interest in them that I have decided to expand them into this.

Warning: Blood, gore, violence, torture, murder, and all that nasty stuff. If you have a weak constitution, please leave this fic immediately.

Notice: This will not be a superpowered!Harry story. So no fancy inheritance (there is sort of one, but not like in regular inheritance fics), no enormous fortune (Harry was left enough by his parents, and he's not above stealing from Death Eaters), no titles/lordships, no undiscovered powers, and no marrying twenty girls. Everything Harry does is within the realm of possibilities, just extremely violent. There will be some character bashing, but nothing that is not deserved (I'm looking at you, Dumbledore).

Redbayly does not own Harry Potter. This will be the only disclaimer for this fic, so don't gripe at me if I don't disclaim every single chapter.

There's One in Every Crowd

Harry wasn't sure when it started, but he knew he had to kill someone.

It was summer, he was with the Dursleys again, and his anger at being isolated from the people he cared about was only making his rage boil. He'd been distraught for a while, mourning the death of Cedric Diggory in that graveyard and cursing himself for not stopping it when he had a chance. To say nothing of how he felt about Voldemort coming back.

While he hadn't been best friends with Cedric (in fact, he barely knew the bloke at all), the suffering of the innocent had always infuriated him. Probably due to his own years of torment in the Dursley household. But Harry had realized not all that long ago that he was not just going to sit back and let the injustices continue. Oh no, he'd seen quite enough of that from his classmates (both during his time at Hogwarts and his days at primary school).

The main question in Harry's mind, though, was: What should I do now?

Harry had begun to realize that he was dangerously uninformed. He needed to learn more about the Death Eaters and Voldemort. And then take them down as quickly and severely as he could, by any means necessary.

That's how Harry ended up sneaking off to London to visit Diagon Alley. He bought what books he could on the last war, and a few on advanced defense magic. It was also there that he realized the Ministry was launching a smear campaign against him; though, thankfully, he'd brought his invisibility cloak with him and ducked under it before anyone stopped long enough to get a good look at him. Harry was incensed by this act of betrayal from the people his mother's sacrifice had saved (Harry always attributed his survival to his mother rather than himself) and was quite tempted to tell the lot of them to go to hell.

But he always remembered that Voldemort would still try to kill him, even if he abandoned the wizarding world to its fate. Besides, it wasn't in Harry's nature to leave innocents to die, no matter how stupid or selfish they were – damn that noble streak of his.

However, that didn't prevent Harry from taking matters concerning the guilty into his own hands. And, after visiting the public archives at the Daily Prophet (under his cloak, of course), Harry read enough in the editions from the war to realize that Death Eaters were not the type of people who should be permitted the privilege of living, let alone walking the streets and running the government.

That is when Harry hit upon the idea of a purge. The wizarding world was so corrupt that the rot had spread to its very heart. The only way to keep it from continuing was to remove it. And soon.

Harry had been formulating his plan for weeks.

He needed to train, to build up his strength. When he wasn't outside jogging or doing the chores, he was shut up in his room studying. He'd bought other reference texts after the spellbooks and histories of the war; mostly they were on the human body, but he'd also come across a book on medieval torture that he felt compelled to obtain.

While Harry objected to torture on principle, he had to admit that the thought of using such procedures on Death Eaters didn't horrify him as much as he had believed it would. He was worried that something had come undone in his mind recently because of how clinically he regarded what he learned and that he actually found himself intrigued by the notion of inflicting muggle-devised torments on purebloods who relied on the Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra for their schemes.

Another factor pushed Harry over the edge. Aunt Petunia had ordered him to clean out the attic. While Harry was looking through the scattered collection of objects all covered in dust – a stark contrast with the clean and ordered lives of the Dursleys – Harry discovered a copy of his mother's family bible. Such things were not uncommon, though it didn't surprise Harry that his aunt and uncle had chucked such a valuable thing in a box and forgotten it; they'd never been particularly religious, only ever visiting the local church for social gatherings.

Still, a family bible was an important heirloom and so Harry took it with him and hid it in his room. Harry himself was not very religious, being doubtful that a loving God would have allowed so many horrible things to happen. But he opened the old bible to the first page and found his mother's family tree. As he looked along the tree, he found a name, Matthew Hopkins, that seemed faintly familiar.

Searching through his trunk, he found his copy of A History of Magic and scanned the index. Flipping to the correct page, he found half a chapter dedicated to the man. He was the most renowned witch-hunter of English history. The entire section vilified the man as a scourge upon fine, upstanding witches and wizards. A wizard's boogeyman.

Instead of disturbing him or making him ashamed of his heritage, Harry felt oddly calmed by it. It put certain things in perspective, in a way. Not that he believed a person's ancestry defined who they are (unless they were like Voldemort and based their entire lives around their heritage), but if one of his forbears had felt it necessary to become Witchfinder General, he must have had a reason. Especially if the wizarding world went out of its way to despise him.

If anything, Harry now felt justified in his course of action. All he needed now was to find the right moment to advance. A week later, he would get his opportunity.