The Darkness Series by Athey
, also found here, available on FanFiction.Net and Archive of Our Own is a Harry Potter For Want Of A Nail AU where Harry goes to The Dark Side and a Slash Fic that ships Harry and Voldemort.
It consists of Harry Potter and the Descent into Darkness, and its sequel Harry Potter and the Breeding Darkness, which was left unfinished but later adopted by Danyealle-sama on adultfanfiction.net.
Harry Potter and the Descent Into Darkness is a 4th year AU. Through an accident Harry and Voldemort's Horcrux begin to interact and Harry slowly begins to change. He becomes stronger and slowly grows aware of the sinister events that have perpetuated his entire life.
The sequel, Harry Potter and the Breeding Darkness picks up right where Descent Into Darkness left off-Harry escapes Privet Dr for the summer after 4th year by staying with Tom. His summer consists of Death Eater meetings, training, and discovering new depths to his relationship with the Dark Lord and Harry grows and changes even more.
The Darkness Series provides examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Rita Skeeter. Also Moaning Myrtle is Retconned into one-she was one of the girls that ruthlessly mocked Tom after he was outed while still at school.
- Badass Bookworm: Harry becomes much more studious after discovering the wonders of Dark Magic. Hermione is naively thrilled with this development.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Luna is the only one who really knows what's going on.
- Cassandra Truth:
- When picking Harry's "treasure" for the Second Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament the cup comes up blank when picking a hostage for Harry to save. Everyone assumes the cup is malfunctioning. No one considers that maybe there's no one at Hogwarts that Harry gives a damn about anymore.
- Ron scries that Harry is a manipulative liar and a murderer while in Divination class, but immediately dismisses it as having misread the results.
- The Charmer: Harry is very charming and wraps Fleur around his little finger.
- The Chosen One: Voldemort was Chosen by Magic to be the Dark Lord. Also Harry was chosen to be the Dark Lord's equal.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Draco takes to smoking during his prefect rounds. Of course they're not muggle cigarettes. They're magic cigarettes that don't cause lung cancer.
- Coming-Out Story: Rita outs Harry to the Wizarding World.
- Cool Chair: Voldemort's got some cool wing-backed chairs at his manor.
- The Corrupter: In Breeding Darkness Harry subtly plays this for Hermione and Neville and many others at Hogwarts as he helps spread the study of Dark magic.
- Dark Is Evil: The Dark Side corrupts Harry and he doesn't even realize how much he's changed.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Harry argues this when he uses Parseltongue to talk down the dragon during the First Task. Can a non-violent solution really be so bad? Also The Dark Lord was Good All Along.
- Detect Evil: There's a spell that detects a wizard's Light or Dark alignment. There's another spell that circumvents this and gives such a test a false reading.
- The Determinator: Lampshaded when Harry walks on a broken ankle to finish the Tournament.
- The Dragon: Harry to Voldemort, at first. Voldemort later decides to introduce Evan Harris as his equal.
- Dead Fic: Harry Potter and the Breeding Darkness, though it was later adopted by two different authors.
- Despair Event Horizon: Harry at the beginning of the story after his friends abandon him and he's shunned by the whole school. It's what leads him letting the Horcrux out.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: Harry while he's trying out some new curses on the Basilisk corpse and later on Rita Skeeter.
- Easily Forgiven: Subverted. When Ron and Hermione finally realize they were jerks and try to apologize Harry pretends to accept but he isn't going to forgive them this time. He will pretend to go back to being their friend because it's easy but he swears they will never be friends again.
- Evil Costume Switch: After summer break Harry returns to Hogwarts with a whole new wardrobe.
- Evil Feels Good: After releasing the horcrux Harry immediately feels better, more powerful, more confident. This is implicit later when Harry's interactions with his inner darkness feels something along the lines of an erotic drug trip with tentacle bondage.
- Evil Mentor: Voldemort to Harry.
- The Evils of Free Will: Dumbledore has been controlling every aspect of Harry's life since before his birth and has become unsettled when things are no longer going according to plan.
- Face–Heel Turn: Harry. By Breeding Darkness he is a Dark Wizard, through and through.
- Fag Hag: Fleur agrees to go out with Harry to the Yule Ball because he's the only person she can hold an intelligent conversation with because he's not affected by her Veela aura. She's the first to guess why.
- False Friend: Harry feels this way about his so-called "friends." Later Harry to everyone at Hogwarts.
- Fantastic Time Management: In Breeding Darkness in order to attend school at Hogwarts, manage the Death Eaters, continue his independent studies, and spend time with Tom; Harry uses a Time Turner to live every day twice.
- Feed the Mole: Dumbledore controlled Trelawney with the imperious to make her spout out a fake prophesy while he knew Snape would be listening in.
- For Your Own Good: This is Dumbledore's excuse for all of his manipulations of Harry.
- Freudian Excuse: Harry was abused by the Durselys, manipulated by Dumbledore and abandoned by his friends. Also Tom Riddle was outed when he attended Hogwarts in the 30s so naturally he found friends and acceptance.
- Gambit Pileup: Voldemort has plans. Harry has plans. Snape has plans. Dumbledore has plans. The results are interesting.
- Girlfriend in Canada: Draco assumes that Harry doesn't really have a boyfriend because this mysterious boyfriend doesn't attend Hogwarts.
- Good All Along: The Dark Lord's chosen task is to save as many people as he can from the coming Apocalypse.
- Good Is Dumb: After four years of knowing him Ron and Hermione finally figure out that Harry was being abused by the Durselys.
- Great Escape: Harry helps Voldemort break his followers out of Azkaban.
- Half-Human Hybrid: All Wizards are the descendents of humans that bred with magical creatures.
- "Hero" Antagonist: Dumbledore, for a limited value of heroic.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Harry notes that many of the light and neutral spells can be just as deadly as the dark ones and finds it to be quite hypocrital that many spells are banned just because they're "dark."
- Horrifying Hero: Harry in his snake form saves Fleur from the Grindelows.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: According to the Elves' ancient prophecies Muggles are going to destroy the world.
- Hypocrite: The "Light" wizards. Also Harry becomes the very thing he despises.
- I Did What I Had to Do: When Hermione complains about the sort of spells Harry is learning he snaps at her that he'll do whatever he has to do to survive the Tournament.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Snape after he learns that Harry is a Dark Wizard and allied with Voldemort.
- In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Well, according to Voldemort and an ancient elven prophecy the muggles are beyond saving...
- Infraction Distraction: Harry conceals his knowledge of Parselmagic by pretending that his snake form is his animagus form.
- It Is Beyond Saving: Tom and the Elven Prophecy says this of the Muggle World.
- It's All About Me: Harry's attitude when Ron is banned from Quidditch because, boo hoo-it's not like Ron was there for him when he thought he was going to die in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
- It's Probably Nothing: Hermione notices Harry is changing but just thinks it's stress brought on by the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
- Just a Stupid Accent: For some reason the Bulgarian students still just speak English with a heavy accent when alone.
- Kingpin in His Gym: Voldemort and Harry work out in their private gym.
- Lack of Empathy: Harry no longer gives a crap about his once "friends."
- The Last Dance: Harry after he's been forsaken by everyone and he's sure the Tournament is going to kill him.
- Laughing Mad: Harry after Rita Skeeter outs him to the Wizarding World.
- Light Is Not Good: Harry believes this and later exploits this Harry uses the conspiracy theory that Dumbledore is the Light Lord and forcing everyone to use light spells so they will obey him to gets Fudge on his side. Also Played Straight because there are several things that seem to suggest that Harry is the Light Lord.
- Living with the Villain: Despite his shift in allegiances Harry still attends Hogwarts.
- The Load: Wormtail is this to the Death Eaters and Harry considers Ron to be this in his other life.
- Loophole Abuse: when Harry faces allegations that he "cheated" during the first task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament by subduing the dragon using Paraseltongue Harry points out that nowhere in the rules did it say he had to fight the dragon.
- Love Makes You Evil: Viktor Krum joins the Death Eaters in order to keep Hermione safe.
- Madden Into Misanthropy: Harry becomes disgusted by his school and his so-called "friends." Sure, they'll support him when he's playing hero or won them a house cup, but when the chips are down they'll readily abandon him at the first sign of trouble.
- Made of Iron: as a consequence of repairing the damage living with the Dursleys has done to his body (using some truly painful methods) Harry has developed a high tolerance for pain.
- Magnetic Villain: Voldemort, being the magically appointed Dark Lord, has this naturally. Also Harry.
- Manipulative Bastard: Dumbledore, Harry.
- Morality Pet: Fleur, Sirius Black, and Hermione to Harry.
- Motive Misidentification: Voldemort isn't really trying to wipe out the Muggles because he knows they're going to destroy themselves. He merely used the Pureblood agenda to build his political powerbase.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: There's Harry's friends the Death Eaters... and Wormtail.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: When using a Time Turner, Harry feels weird whenever he's in proximity of his past or future self.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dumbledore - Voldemort's true goal is to save the Wizarding World.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: The Horcrux in Harry's head.
- Out-Gambitted: Dumbldore did this with everyone with the fake prophecy.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Harry, and since his Face–Heel Turn he's been subtly corrupting his once "friends" in an attempt to "save" some of them.
- Pet the Dog: Harry saves Fleur from the Grindelows.
- The Power of Hate: when practicing curses Harry focuses his anger to get stronger.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Harry Potter and the Descent Into Darkness. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Harry is embittered by the abandonment of his friends following the fiasco with the Goblet of Fire and allows the horcrux access to his mind, he finds comfort in his new imaginary friend who guides him to Slytherin's Library in the Chamber of Secrets for guidance on how to survive the tournament.
- Prophecy Twist: Dumbledore's fake prophesy. Also the Elven Prophesy of the End of Days where the Dark Lord and the Light Lord must work together to save us all. Harry assumes that the Light Lord is Dumbledore but there are several hints (such as his Magnetic Hero status, his previously strongly light aligned aura, his being known as the Dark Lord's equal...) that the Light Lord is/was actually Harry.
- Prophetic Name: Harry uses the alias "Notechis" (meaning tiger snake) when buying questionable books. Shortly afterwards Harry learns how to transform into a sea krait, a kind of striped snake.
- Psychotic Smirk: Harry, quite frequently.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Harry and Voldemort are both said to have impossibly powerful magical auras.
- Sanity Slippage: Harry, especially once he gets a taste of The Dark Side.
- Scaled Up: Harry learns how to transform into a sea krait.
- Screw Destiny: Harry decides to side with Voldemort and not play Dumbledore's games anymore.
- Seeking Sanctuary: Harry uses one of the Potter properties, which happens to be an old abbey, as the new Death Eater headquarters.
- Sexier Alter Ego: Tom has his normal handsome, human form versus the ugly snakey form which he uses as his persona as the Dark Lord so that his followers will deify him. Also Harry uses the Dark Arts for self-improvement.
- Slash Fic: It's Voldemort/Harry
- Slasher Smile: Harry when he has Rita in his clutches.
- Snowball Lie: Harry's lies are not always consistent but he always has another lie for why he lied in the first place.
- Stepford Smiler: after the Tournament, Harry falls back into his "Gryffindor hero" persona to put his "friends" minds at rest so he can more easily spy on them.
- Surprise Incest: Harry learns he's related to Voldemort on both sides of the family tree. They don't think too hard about it.
- Talking the Monster to Death: How Harry gets through the First Task of the Tri-wizard Tournament.
- Tangled Family Tree: All "Pure bloods" are related to each other and, taken further all wizards are probably related to each other and the so-called muggleborn are actually the descendents of squibs. Also Wizards initailly came about from humans interbreeding with various magical creatures.
- Teens Are Monsters: Harry's fair-weather friends. Also Harry himself.
- Themed Aliases: Harry has "Notechis Noir", "Notechis" is Latin for "Tiger Snake" and Harry eventually gains the abilitiy to turn into a striped snake and Noir is French for "Black" which he named for his Godfather, Sirius Black. Sirius later nicknames him "Stripe" for his snake form. And later Harry takes on the identity of "Evan Harris." "Evan" comes from his mother's maiden name Evans and "Harris" for in case someone slips up and almost calls him "Harry". Also Voldemort has "Nichodemas Tomaras". Nichodemas means "the people's conqueror" and Tomaras sounds like "Tom".
- This Is Your Brain on Evil: Harry struggles with Dark Magic addiction. Draco recognizes the symptoms.
- Training from Hell: Harry gets dueling lessons from Voldemort, at the end of which he frequently has to work on reattaching limbs.
- The Unfettered: After he was abandoned by everyone Harry's one goal becomes "survive the Tri-Wizard Tournament." After he succeeds with this goal it changes to "help Voldemort prepare the Magical World for the Apocalypse."
- Villain with Good Publicity: Harry. No one (except for maybe Dumbledore) suspects a thing. Also Dumbledore.
- Villains Out Shopping: In Breeding Darkness Dumbledore runs into Voldemort and his mysterious new Dragon / boyfriend literally out shopping on a daytrip to Little Hangleton.
- Villainous Friendship: Harry and Barty Crouch Jr. Also Harry and Thorfinn Rowle.
- We Can Rule Together: Harry approaches Voldemort and asks how he might be of assistance. Later Harry offers Wormtail to Sirius if Sirius would take Wormtail's place in serving the Dark Lord. As much as Sirius loves his godson he can't accept such an offer.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Voldemort. He's actually working to save as many people as he can from the coming Apocalypse.
