Disclosure: I don't own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling does. It is her world, we just play in it.
A/N: I read a story with a similar theme where Harry was framed for a murder and was executed for it but survived. I didn't really like it much so I am giving it a shot. Thanks for reading and if you like/dislike something let me know. I probably won't change it but I would still like to know what you think.
"All in favor of convictions, raise your hands," Minister Fudge spouted.
All members of the Wizengamot raised their hands. Soft crying began, followed by a few heavy sobs. There were outbursts of "No"s or "Not Possible". The main murmurs coming from the audience were of "I knew it" and "Always thought he was trouble." The noise was starting to escalate until Fudge brought the gavel down on the podium.
"All in favor of acquittal, raise your hands," no one stirred. "The accused has been convicted of premeditated murder, rape of a pure-blood, the use of an unforgivable curse for torture, and the use of the Killing Curse. These crimes individually would earn you a life sentence in Azkaban, but the all of them and on the same person. I have no choice but to sentence you to the Dementor's Kiss, to be followed immediately by execution by means of cremation."
More wails, screams, cries, and even cheering went up. Two hit wizards grabbed the prisoner by both arms. He didn't talk, struggle, or respond in any way. He was too shocked, not from the verdict, he was expecting that after the testimony he gave under Veritaserum, but from the actual testimony that he gave under Veritaserum. He told them what he remembered of that night, but it seemed like a dream of what they said he did. Walking down the hall, stunning Dean, and proceeding to find Cho and Marietta in the library. It all seemed like a dream, but not like most memories should be.
He remembered doing it all, taking Marietta and Cho from the library to the Astronomy tower. How, when they got there he put a body bind on Cho, then proceeded to torture Marietta. He had put a silencing charm on her, she couldn't even scream under the Cruciatus Curse. And how, when she could barely move from the torture, he then raped her, making Cho watch the entire act. He then stood over Marietta and cast the Killing Curse. Then turning his attention to Cho. He approached, staring straight into her eyes. He could see the anguish, sorrow, and fear and it made him feel good. Then he flicked his wrist and the green light floated toward her. He watched has her eyes widened and tears started flowing, then the green light washed over her and her eyes became empty. The next memory is of being woken by Aurors in his bed and them checking his wand, then whisking him away to a holding cell in the Ministry.
He was jolted out of his memory by the screams of his best friends. They were yelling at him, but he couldn't tell what they where saying. Bits and pieces were piercing the fog he was in. 'Believe you' and 'not possible' where the only real words he could make out. Then a voice in his head snapped him to full consciousness. It wasn't the voice he was expecting. It was a female voice. It was telling him to hide himself, get to the closet under the stairs, it will be safe. At first he thought it was the voice of his mother, he had heard it under stressing conditions before and thought she was trying to save him again. No, it was another. His eyes snapped fully open and head turned as if he as hit in the face by a bludger. The voice was of Ginny Weasley. How was she in his head? What did she mean hide? It didn't make any sense.
'I know you can hear me. Find the closet and hide and you will be safe, trust me. I know you didn't do this. Me, Ron, and Hermione will figure this out. We love you and believe in you. You have to believe in us. I love you Harry James Potter, and I will never give up'.
But before any sort of sense could be made, Harry Potter was pulled through the doors of the court room to the flashing bulbs of the press. He was put on display as he was dragged through the halls to the Department of Mysteries, to the Chamber of the Dementor's Kiss. Harry's head was still reeling as he was pulled through the Department of Mysteries, but he couldn't get what Ginny had done out of the forefront of his thoughts. What the bloody hell did she mean hide? Where was he going to hide? Then like a Hippogriff kick to the head, he figured it out. God she was brilliant. A Dementor's Kiss sucked the soul out of a person. It had nearly happened before. She was talking about hiding inside himself. It had only been a few days prior to the incident that she and him figured out that there could possible be some part of Riddle attached to the scar. They didn't know it was a soul fragment, but that it was some part of his magic, some dark part.
Sirius and his dad would not let him live this down, but he took Snape's advice and cleared his head of everything. Every emotion, thought, feeling, and presence of any sort. He then focused on the Dursley's house and his cupboard under the stairs. He hadn't been put in there in nearly five years, but he could remember it has clear as ever. Then, just as he had read in a book with Hermione, he saw the cupboard door. Just the door and nothing else. He started moving toward the door, still focusing has hard as he could on the door and every grain, paint chip, and imperfection that he could remember. Then out of the corner of his eye, well mind's eye. He saw a shape. Not just a shape, more of a figure, a figure of a tall man in a black robe. It was Voldemort. Not Voldemort now, it was Voldemort when he had killed his mom. Harry then realized what it was. Harry had a piece of Voldemort's soul attached to him. Just like the diary. Ginny figured it out.
Harry then realized that the fragment saw the door. It looked at Harry then at the door, then back to Harry with a puzzle look on his face. Harry started moving toward the door again, a little quicker than before. The eye's on the soul widened at the realization of what Harry was doing. Harry was trapping the soul out. If Harry could get into the closet, maybe the soul would be sucked out and he would be safe, just like Ginny told him. Harry sprinted as fast has he could. He looked over at the soul, it wasn't running, it was gliding really fast toward the door.
Harry didn't think he had time to make it. The soul was moving faster then he was. He tried to make the door closer to him, but it wasn't moving. It had to be the anchor point of his mind. So Harry did the only thing he could think of. He put a wall up between the soul and the door. The soul flew up and over the wall, but it has to slow down to do so. Harry put up another one, and another higher yet. It was working, he was almost to the door. Harry had thrown one more wall up, but the soul blew a hole right through it. But the energy it expended gave Harry the split second he needed. He mentally pulled the door open before he took two steps and dove for the little room. He landed up against the back wall and rolled and grabbed the door pulling it shut will all his might. The soul slammed into the door, nearly making Harry fall way. He still held on, but realized that the door locked from the outside. The soul was pulling hard to open and was making good progress.
'This is my mind. I am strongest here', Harry thought. And pulled the door shut again with a load bang. He then visualized the strongest lock he could remember from the Dursley's, and it appeared on the inside, locking out the soul. There was more pulling on the door but it wasn't budging. Harry had done it. He was safe in the room. But now what? He was here and the soul was out there. He didn't know when the Dementor's Kiss was coming or even if this would work.
The Aurors carrying Harry's body felt him go limp and saw his eyes close. They thought he had given into his fate. There was no appeal coming for this case. He only had moments left and there was no rescue party coming. There were not going to be heroics like the Department of Mysteries fiasco.
Fudge had used this situation to rebound. He had said Harry had manifested an image of the You-Know-You to get everyone to believe he had returned and that Dumbledore was in on it. Fudge kept his job and his approval rating went higher then ever. He smiled as he stopped out side the Dementor's chamber, he was getting rid of the nuisance Potter. To bad to, he could have brought in much from public favor. But this turned out well for him also.
The Aurors dragged Harry's limp body in the room and shackled his wrist chains to a hook on the wall above his head so that his feet were barely on the ground. His feet where then chained to the wall about a foot apart, rendering Harry immobile. But it didn't matter, Harry had given up on his body and was fighting in his mind, and winning. The Aurors then left the room and shut the door behind them. There was little windows for a special view of the event, for those who could bare to watch.
The Dementor descended from high in the chamber. Ice started to form on the walls and over the windows. The Dementor came down slowly over Harry's body. It's skeleton hands, mire centimeters from touching him, yet his body did not flinch.
Harry could feel the cupboard getting colder. He knew the Dementor must be nearing his body. Knew it wouldn't be long before it began to rip the soul out of his body. Then he heard it. The faint scream of his mother dying. He shivered and blinked away the slight dizziness. The Dementor must be trying right now. He then heard the soul start screaming and pulling harder on the door. There was another noise coming closer. A low bellowing noise Harry had never heard before. He could hear the soul fragment yelling at something, telling to go away, it had the wrong one. That he was Lord Voldemort, he commanded the Dementors. But the bellowing came closer and the voice outside the door became more desperate and frantic. Harry's head began to swim toward unconsciousness. So he did the only thing he could thing of, Patronous. He didn't really think he could cast a Patronous in his head but he had to try. The bellowing became so loud it started to hurt Harry's hears. There came a deafening scream from the soul out side the door, the very scream the diary made. There was a soul fragment in the diary. Voldemort split his soul in order to stay alive. That is what Dumbledore was teaching him about. But why didn't he just tell him?
Harry's revolution was interrupted by a deathly scratching coming from outside the door. The Dementor was trying to get in, to get all the souls out of the body. Harry concentrated has hard as he could to try to expel him, like Snape expelled Harry. It wasn't working. The Patronous, it had to work. Now he just had to think of Happy thoughts. Ginny was the happiest thought he could have. He had just realized he fancied her, really fancied her. He thought that he even loved her. But thinking wasn't going to save him. No, he knew he loved Ginny. He had loved her for a while now. Since before last year, but he just didn't know what those feelings were. The past summer had just solidified them. Up until then, she was just a friend and his best mate's sister. Plus she always had a boyfriend. But he loved her, loved her more than anything else in the world. He let the feeling fill him up and he released it at the door, at the creature on the other side.
The Dementor's mouth settled over Harry's. It began a low bellow and started to suck at Harry's soul. It was taking longer than was expected on a prison that had surrendered their body like it looked as Harry had. Nearly two minutes had passed before there was a faint glow coming from deep in Harry's mouth. It wasn't the blue glow that was familiar with souls being sucked out. It has green glow, a faint green eerie glow. The Dementor didn't mind what color it was, most of the on lookers just thought he had such a tainted soul it should be green. But the Dementor didn't stop after the soul disappeared into it's grotesque maw. It started to bellow loader and suck harder, like it wanted to suck Harry's body into it's mouth. The bellow was getting loader and loader. So loud the on lookers had to cover their ears. But just as the crowd thought the bellowing Dementor was going to bring down the walls, the noise was cut short and the Dementor flew back from Harry as thought it was hit by lighting. The Dementor accelerated upward, moving faster than anyone in the crowd could remember a seeing a Dementor traveling.
The Aurors then moved into the chamber and pulled Harry's limp body free from the chains and drug him out by the arm pits as his head fell forward with no resistance. The next stop was the cremation room. The cremation room as a small room with just one thing in it, a cremation chamber. The chamber resemble an extremely large wood stove. It was square in shape with a chimney coming out the top and a door on one side. There were large rollers on the inside to place a body on. This sort of punishment was used a lot following Dementor's Kiss. It save the Ministry the effort in keeping a soulless body in Azkaban. Most of the time it was not announced that the body would be cremated, but Harry Potter's case was too publicized not to.
Harry's body was loaded onto the rollers and slid in with his hands fold and placed on his stomach. The door was shut with a large clang and the fires where started below. It took a few minutes to get the fire hot and large enough to cremate a body. Wizards didn't use Muggle means of gases to fuel the flame. The temperature inside was starting to rise and perspiration started.
Harry reeled from the powerful jolt he sent through his mind. He could tell the Dementor was no longer in his mind. But he was still in his closet and didn't know what to do next. Would they send another one? Did it already suck out Voldemort's soul? While he pondered these questions, he didn't realize that his body was being transported to and loaded in a large cremation chamber.
Harry noticed that the closet was warmer than it was before. Maybe he just realized the temperature inside the tiny space. But it seemed to keep getting hotter. He was in the cremation chamber. He was going to be burned alive. How was he going to get out of this? He grabbed the lock on the door and ripped it off with ease. He then kicked the door out into is mind. Looking around, Harry noticed that it was no longer black emptiness. It had a faint orange tint to it and there seemed to be weird formations of sorts every where. He could swear he saw flowing lava in the far distance. It didn't make any sense, though the temperature seemed to be increasing steadily.
Harry saw in the far distance, a bird and it was moving toward him. It has a very long tail, but he could make out much of the rest of the bird. It seemed like many minutes before Harry could actually make out what the bird was and it was no bird, it was a Phoenix. But this didn't make any sense, why was there a Phoenix in his head? The Phoenix landed close to Harry's feet and looked up longingly into Harry's eyes.
'Fly', Harry heard. 'Fly now.'
Fly? Fly where, fly how?
'This doesn't make sense. What do you mean fly?' He thought to the bird.
'Fly now,' was the only response.
'Fly, I can't fly. I am a human and human's don't fly,' He screamed mentally.
'You human, yes. You Phoenix, yes. Fly.'
'Phoenix? What are you talking about? How am I a Phoenix? I am just human you stupid bird,' Harry berated the bird.
The bird then spread it's wings and lifted off the ground, higher and higher it went. It did sort of a back flip and started toward Harry. Faster and faster it flew, beating it's wings. It lined straight up with Harry and before he really new what was going on, the Phoenix flew straight into him making a large impact and knocking him off his feet. Harry groaned and grunted a little but managed to look up. The bird was gone, but there was a large burn hole in his shirt centered over his heart.
'Stupid bird. What the hell was it talking about? You Phoenix, yes. Fly' Harry huffed exasperated. How could he be part Phoenix. That doesn't even make sense. Sounds like something Dumbledore would say. Dumbledore, Dumbledore would definitely say something like that. The bird did look a little like Fawkes.
'Wow it is really getting hot in here,' Harry thought to himself. 'Reminds me a little of being in the Chamber of Secrets second . . . year.' Harry's thoughts slowed down. He slowly turned to his right forearm and held it up. He pulled back the sleeve and seeing the faint scar where the Basilisk fang had pierced his flesh. Harry's mind started to reel again. The heat was starting to effect his mind. He could barely think and his skin started to itch a little bit. A wave of realization flooded over Harry. 'But it is impossible. But it is the only thing that could be what the bird was talking about,' Harry thought to himself. He relaxed and placed a hand over the spot where the Phoenix had hit is chest and concentrated with all his power. He could feel some sort of heated power boiling from inside. Then like a dam breaking, a surge of power flowed through Harry. The power was white hot and made every nerve is his body ignite in pain. His scream started to rip at his throat. His mind was at it's limit when he connected the dots. He understood what the Phoenix meant.
Harry Potter's last thought was 'Fly'.
There was still a crowd surrounding the cremation room, making certain that the Minister was going to go through with the execution of the Boy-Who-Lived. One guessed was especially excited, because with the cremation of Harry Potter's body and soul, no one would be able to tell that the memory of that night had been planted into his mind. Planted by the one that committed those atrocious acts. One who was following in his unknown father's foot steps. Sure he had gotten there in a different manner, but he had replaced his father among the trusted Death Eaters by framing the great Harry Potter. He was just hoping for the Kiss but the cremation just made it a little bit sweeter.
He, along with everyone else, watched as the temperature of the cremation chamber was reaching the critical temperature needed to cremate a body. Then it happened, the chamber kicked in and started pouring the flames and heat onto Harry Potter's body. The temperature rose to well over three thousand degrees, with potential to turn the bones to ash. A five minute burn would be sufficient to remove the last remains of Harry Potter from this world. But only moments after the intense burn began, there was large explosion from inside of the chamber. The force was so great it blew the walls of the chamber out and through the stone wall, killing several people observing, including the Senior Undersecretary herself.
The after shock of the force was teeming with a magical energy that no one could quite understand. Several members of the Department of Mysteries were called in to try to figure out what happened. They finally concluded that Harry had quite a bit of power and the cremation process had released a large portion of blocked magical energy.
As Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Weasleys were approaching the public floo access, there was a rather jolting shake and a lot of people running toward the direct elevator to the Department of Mysteries. As everyone started through the floo back to the Borrow for the funeral, Ginny let a small smile creep to one corner of her mouth. Ginny stepped into the floo and one last thought flashed through her head before throwing the floo powder.
'Now, the hard part begins.'