Harry Potter, the Coward

This is just a oneshot of an idea of mine that could be developed to something more. This idea is obviously available for adoption, please give me credit and give me a review or a PM if you want to adopt it.

Disclamer: Harry Potter is obviously not mine.

Note: March 31's; this one-shot has been corrected by Rachael With an A. September 15; this one-shot has been rechecked by AnnHarrisForever.

Note: April 30's; just letting you know that I have decided to actually continue to write this story. It would not be a huge long fic, but I had so far planned out 10-15 chapters for it. Though, the chapters would mainly focus on the problems Harry faced after the tournament, with a bit of some scenes after he meets Tom. I might change my mind and continue after posting those chapters, but if not, and someone wants to develop the story further...please let me now. Also note that the story would be AU.

xXxOne-ShotxXx

xXxDumbledorexXx

Dumbledore was sitting in his office, trying to stay calm as he thought back on the child. Harry Potter, the boy that used to be known as "the boy who lived", but now recognized as "the boy who became a squib" and more commonly as "Harry Potter, the coward". Taking a drink from his goblet of pumpkin juice, he thought back on that day - the day Harry Potter's name came out from the Goblet of Fire. It had been more than three years since it had happened, but he could still remember all of the shocked faces, when the goblet produced a fourth name from the blue flames, especially Harry's when he had called his name after reading the small piece of parchment.

He remembered how the child was bullied by the rest of the school after that day, treating him as a cheater and a thief for stealing the spotlight from Cedric. The insults were then soon changed to ones of 'coward'. During the first task of the tournament, where the champions had had to face a dragon and steal one of its eggs, the crowd was reduced to shocked silence. When Harry's turn came to face the dragon, the boy had vanished. Soon insults started to come from the crowd, as they called the boy a coward. A coward that had decided to run after looking at the dragon he had to face.

Taking another drink, he then remembered how anxious and scared he was when he learned of the boy's disappearance. Harry had to compete; he couldn't allow himself to lose his most important piece of the chessboard. The tournament's contract dictated that the champions who didn't participate would lose their magic as a consequence, and as such he couldn't permit the boy who lived to lose his magic - the child was needed for the war against Voldemort. Hours later, he managed to find Harry with the help of several Ministry Aurors. While searching for the boy he was developing a plan of discreetly using the Imperius curse on Harry to force the boy to compete, but when he found him it was already too late. Harry was using his invisibility cloak to keep himself hidden and harder to find; when they found him in Hogsmeade it was already past midnight - the day of the first task had already passed. He tried unsuccessfully to control his anger when he saw the unconscious body of the boy lying on the ground with most parts of his body still invisible, hidden beneath the cloak. The statements of the tournament's contract had already taken effect. Harry Potter's magic had been taken away.

After Dumbledore remembered that moment, when he saw the boy's unconscious and magic-less body, he angrily threw the goblet of juice, smashing it into pieces as it hit the wall. Slightly calmer, he thought back on the rest of the wizarding world's reactions as they learned of the news. When the sun had risen again, the rest of the wizarding world had already heard of what had happened at the tournament. The public had gone into hysterics as they learned that their famous "boy who lived" had been reduced to a mere squib. Some of the public looked at the child with sympathy, but most of them could only agree with the tournament's crowd and called him a coward. They couldn't believe that the boy who lived, champion of the people and destroyer of He Who Must Not Be Named, was scared of dragons. They couldn't understand how someone that managed to survive and beat the Dark Lord was unable to go on and complete the first task.

He remembered all the things he had tried to do to recover the boy's magic. He remembered how, he hadn't been willing to let himself lose such a valuable pawn in his game to that contract. He had tried everything, yet nothing had worked. The only thing that had calmed him then, and now, with all that had happened, was the fact that Harry's famous scar had also vanished in the process. It seemed that Dumbledore didn't need to get rid of the boy, as he was no longer holding a part of Tom's soul inside of him.

Time passed, and Dumbledore being unable to find a way to return Harry's magic, the boy was forced to leave Hogwarts. Being reduced to a squib status, he could no longer attend the school as a student, so he had been sent back to live with the Dursleys. He had expected Harry to protest at the news, especially as he knew how the boy's relatives had treated him, but surprisingly the child didn't care about that. It seemed that after everything that had happened, the rest of the school had started to bully and insult the boy to a point where Harry didn't mind returning to his relatives. He didn't stay there for long, anyway. Rita Skeeter had managed to make where Harry was staying public knowledge. As a result, it made Privet Drive a tourist spot for wizards and witches as they went there every day to demand an explanation from the boy who lived about what happened in the tournament. They wanted to know why he ran, why he preferred the option of losing his magic and becoming a squib instead of going through with the task.

Harry left the house by the end of the month to live with his godfather, Sirius Black. He didn't mind that the boy had left, the wards had become useless with Harry no longer being a wizard, and with Harry now a squib and no longer a Horcrux, the boy had lost his importance. A few months prior to this Dumbledore found that Voldemort didn't care for the child either. Voldemort was now convinced that Harry was no longer a threat, and had forgotten about the boy and decided to concentrate on the War.

Two and a half years after the tournament, Voldemort had managed to find another way to recreate a body for himself and make himself known to the public. With no more threats in his way, Voldemort was now focused and determined to finally win the War, which he was currently accomplishing by taking over the Ministry.

That brought Dumbledore's thoughts back to the present. He was trying to control his anger as he read about Voldemort finally taking control of the Ministry. After months of fighting each other, Voldemort had managed to win a "round" against him, and taken over the Ministry. He was still in control of Hogwarts, though. He was not going to let Voldemort take control of his school. While he stayed and protected the school, the Order members were still searching for the rest of Tom's Horcruxes so they could be destroyed. They had already managed to get rid of four of them, excluding Harry's.

"Harry Potter," he mused, as he turned to look towards a small picture of the boy on his desk. "This war was much easier when Voldemort stupidly focused all of his mind on you."

xXxHarry PotterxXx

It had been more than three years since he had made his decision not to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. It was a decision that had marked his life forever, when his life as a wizard was concerned. He had lost his ability to use magic, and he was now treated by the public even worse than how the Dursleys treated him. Something that he thought was impossible.

He was called a coward at first, with some resentment, but now he was called both a coward and a liar. He had been called a liar, ever since Voldemort's return to the wizarding world. A liar because they all thought of him as being responsible of finally eliminating He Who Must Not Be Named and he was an even bigger coward than before because he ran away, became a squib, and could no longer fight against the Dark Lord. He could accept the coward part, but how could he be called a liar for that? He didn't even know about the magical world until he was eleven years old. With Voldemort returning and as he was now treated far worse than before, his Godfather decided to fully erase all traces of both of them from the magical world, and only stay, hidden in the muggle world.

Bringing him to his present situation - currently living on the continent of Australia. He was looking through the window, as the school bus carried him towards his new muggle school, ignoring all the teenagers around him. He didn't talk much anymore, and the few times he did, it was mostly with Sirius, the only person that had yet to abandon him. With the exception of Sirius, all of the people he considered as family and friends had long abandoned and forgotten about him. Some of them did stay and support him for a while after he became a squib, but with time they stopped talking to him, especially after Voldemort made his return, as they received pressure from the public, who harassed them for being supportive of him.

He was slowly flexing the fingers of his left hand as he tried to control his anger. Anger that increased as he thought back to the day he had made his decision to not compete in the Tournament. He remembered how he had become tired, tired of being the famous boy who lived. Tired of been the one that must constantly face and thwart the Dark Lord and tired of always having something happen to him at Hogwarts. He was tired, and when he thought that for once he was going to have a normal year, the tournament which only let seventeen years old participate changed that when the damn Goblet had to pull out his name. So he made the decision of not letting this apparent curse win this time around. He was not going to let it decide again, and force him to compete in that damn Tournament even if he had to lose his magic in the process. So he went on and in the last minute he used his invisibility cloak to hide himself, and ran away from Hogwarts.

He had regretted it many times, he still did, but he was sick of being the "boy who lived", something that he had managed to change in the process, which was even better now that for some strange reason Voldemort had stopped going after him. He thought at first that it could have been because of his current squib status, but as he thought about it more deeply, he could no longer believe that. Voldemort would have still gone on and killed him anyway. "I just don't understand why he keeps me alive," he murmured to himself.

xXxTom RiddlexXx

'You will understand pretty soon, Harry Potter,' he thought. He was not Voldemort, but actually one of his many Horcruxes, a Horcrux that used to live dormant on Harry's forehead, but became active the day that Harry's magic was taken away. The lightning bolt scar was erased from the boy's forehead, because the Horcrux had moved inside his body. As time passed, the Horcrux was adapting with the child's body, with his magic very slowly replacing the magical cores that the boy had lost. By now he had nearly recovered the boy's ability to use magic - not at the levels that the child originally had, but he was no longer a squib either. He kept it in control to prevent the boy from learning of this, as he was waiting until the time was right. That time would be a week from now. It would still take two more years for Harry to make a full recovery to his original core's capacity, but he wanted to reveal himself much sooner. He wanted to use that time to teach the boy about the missing Hogwarts years, and help him recover all of that valuable time he had already lost, and more.

He would have to teach the boy how to defend himself, and in the process gain some influence over him. Sadly, no matter how much access he could get on the boy's mind and body, he couldn't permanently take full control of Harry. He would have taken over a long time ago if he had been able to. The maximum he could do was control the body for several minutes a day, so he was not able to protect the body, including himself the Horcrux, properly. Potter had to be taught well so he could take over and protect both of them for the time that the Horcrux wasn't able to.

He still used it a couple of times, and took over the body for enough time to send a letter and reveal to the Dark Lord Harry's true status as a Horcrux vessel. The Dark Lord had been furious when he learned of that fact, as he could no longer fulfill his wish of getting rid of the runt. He had accepted his plan on keeping that detail a secret to fully convince Dumbledore that Voldemort's Horcrux that resided inside Harry was no more, when in fact it was very much alive. With the boy now having to be kept alive and the Horcrux not being able to take full control of the body, Voldemort had also given him the task to turn Harry to his side. In other words, his mission was to get, if not force, the boy under Voldemort's control.

He didn't mind as he had already been doing this by developing some influences over Harry's thoughts and ideas. He had been slowly increasing Harry's hatred for Dumbledore and his friends for a while now. This hate would grow stronger when he finally revealed to the boy the fact that he was actually holding a Horcrux, and that Dumbledore only kept him alive to be killed at the right moment.

While he waited for the week to come, he continued to distract himself by looking through Harry's memories. Not realizing that with each passing day, as he continued to watch the boy's memories and realize how similar they were, he was getting more and more possessive over Harry. The Horcrux was slowly changing his mind as he wanted the boy for himself, and not in Voldemort's control or anyone else'.

xXxThe EndxXx

Hope you like the story so far. Sorry for the possible errors, English isn't my first language...I'm trying to do the best I can.