Harry knocks on the old wooden door, fidgeting nervously as he waits for the owner of the ramshackle house to answer.
The door is flung open by an obviously inebriated Severus Snape who takes one look at the person standing on his doorstep and lets loose all the rage hidden behind those ebony eyes.
"Potter! What in Merlin's name are you doing on my porch? Have I not made it clear before that I have no desire to see you in anything but detention? Honestly, if you had never been born, none of this would've have happened!"
He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. When he opens his eyes and sees the boy still standing there, he gives his fiercest glare and utters in his chilliest voice, "I have no time for a worthless child such as yourself. Remove yourself from my sight." And slams the door in the poor boy's face.
Had he stayed a moment longer, he would have seen a single tear fall from emerald eyes before they went empty as he turned around slowly and walked away, his hands clutching around his wand and a rather full envelope.
Harry is kneeling still, wand grasped tightly, in a decimated village, surrounded by the bodies of the victims, a floating dark mark hovering just over his head, when his arm is grabbed and he is pulled up.
"Harry James Potter, you are under arrest
for participating in the death eater attack that took place earlier this afternoon in Ottery St. Catchpole; for the murder of so many people under the dark mark, you are sentenced to life in Azkaban. As you have been apprehended at the scene of the crime with the weapon in your hand, you will be taken directly to your cell."
The Auror grabbed his other hand an placed magic-binding cuffs around his wrists before apparating him to the island prison.
When they arrive, the pry his wand out of his hand as well as the letter and strip him of his clothes, branding a stylized "LIFE" onto the back of his hand to signify his life sentence in Azkaban, should he ever escape.
They then dress the still unresponsive boy in black and white striped robes and lead him down to the deepest level of Azkaban, with nearly constant Dementor activity, and leave him in the cell furthest from the stairs, shoving him in unceremoniously. He falls onto his side and just lays there, not even twitching. The auror enters the cell and kicks him over toward the wall and away from the bars until he is half curled into a ball in a corner of the room, his dull, blank emerald eyes staring straight ahead, out the bars as the Auror leaves him be with the dementors swarming nearer curiously.
It has barely been a day since the brat visited the house and interrupted my mourning with the proof of her infidelity and already the Headmaster is calling the order for an emergency meeting. With a sigh, I dress in my stiff teaching robes and floo to the meeting.
When I arrive, I remain in the shadows, as per usual, observing the people around my to get a feel for what is going on. Oddly enough, the Weasleys are divided; Bill, Charlie and the twins are standing against the wall opposite me glaring daggers at Ron, Ginny and Molly. Before I have any more time to question it, Dumbledore calls the meeting to order.
"Thank you, everyone, for coming so quickly. I would not have called you had it not been so dire. Harry Potter has just been arrested and sentenced to Azkaban. He was found in Ottery St. Catchpole under the dark mark, surrounded by the dead and dying with his wand firmly clutched in his hand and is believed to have participated in the raid that took place there earlier yesterday morning."
There are several expressions displaying shock, and if I had not trained myself to not react, I'm sure mine would've been joining theirs. Suddenly, the youngest Weasley boy stands up, pointing at his brothers.
"See! I told you he was going dark! Why else would he come to our house and tell us what he did? He knew he was going dark and wanted to find an appropriately dark family! I told you!"
Panting harshly, the boy sits down and glares daggers at the four boys who have no problem returning the favor.
One of the twins steps forward and, in an uncharacteristically cold voice, states. "And if you had to live with the monsters he called relatives, wouldn't you be glad to find someone else in the world, even someone you thought hated you, who could save you from them? If you had to live with someone as evil and abusive as the dark lord, wouldn't you take any out you could get, even if it turned out to be Severus bloody Snape?!"
Ron flinched at that and looks slightly shocked as he chokes out. "They were that bad?"
The second twin speaks up from his place against the wall. "They made you-know-who look like a giant teddy bear. They beat him, neglected to feed him, worked him to the bone, even raped him, and at the end of the day, locked him into a boot cupboard, telling him how worthless his is and how no one would ever love a freak like him. Wouldn't you want to escape that?"
Bill adds his two cents worth. "Honestly, I'm shocked he's as selfless as he is; I've known a few people in situations nowhere near as bad as his and most of them wanted nothing to do with anyone else. They also were more likely to try and end the pain themselves and the fact that Harry never tried to do that merely raises my respect for him."
Charlie nods along with him. "Damn straight! So when he found out he had another relative, I was relieved that he was going to meet him!"
The rest of the Order is following the conversation like an audience at a tennis rally, heads swiveling between both groups as they speak.
Before anyone could say anything else, several owls flew in the open window, each bearing a newspaper in their talons. Quickly and efficiently, they each dropped their packages in front of a different person and promptly flew back out the window.
There was a kind of shocked silence at the odd occurrence until one person choked upon seeing the headline;
BOY-WHO-LIVED-TO-GO-DARK NOT A POTTER?
In a not-so-surprising turn of events, the Boy-who-lived was found clutching his wand amidst the carnage of one of He-who-must-not-be-named's raids today, standing directly under the dark mark and kneeling beside the corpse of a small child.
As we already knew, Harry Potter has been going dark for several years, and this reporter believes he has joined the Dark Lord as one of his Death Eaters.
When apprehended, Potter merely repeated the phrase "Worthless Child" under his breath. He was deemed guilty on the scene and escorted to Azkaban where he will be serving a life sentence.
This reporter has also been informed that when the tarnished golden boy was brought to Azkaban, his possessions were limited to two things; his wand, oddly blackened, and an envelope containing three pieces of parchment.
The first piece was a letter addressed to one Severus Snape, congratulating him on his son's Potion Mastery; the second was the certificate proving Hadrian Nightshade Snape had passed the mastery tests to become a potions master.
It is perhaps the third sheet that is the most damning; the third sheet is the result of a Gringotts Heritage Potion. Attached is a copy of this sheet.
HERITAGE RESULTS FOR: Harry James Potter
TRUE NAME: Hadrian Nightshade Snape
BIRTH PARENTS: Lily Amber Evans (D) and Severus Tobias Snape
BLOOD-ADOPTED PARENTS: James Charlus Potter (D) and Sirius Argetum Black (D)
This reporter was just as surprised as you readers surely are; the boy-who-lived, son of a dark wizard? How long has he known? How long has he been planning to join his father as a servant of you-know-who? As soon as this reporter knows, so too shall the public. Until that fateful day, farewell my faithful readers!
-Rita Skeeter
Snape set the paper down, face paler than usual, and his mind in turmoil. 'THIS is why the boy came to my house? And I sent him away…did my words shatter him so badly?'
Glancing back at the paper, he rereads one line; When apprehended, Potter merely repeated the phrase "Worthless Child" under his breath. How desperate for attention did the arrogant boy have to be for his usual diatribe to shatter him so completely? Could his perception of the boy be wrong? Could the arrogance be a cover for something darker?
Severus dropped into a convenient chair as not-so-subtle cues from the past flash behind his eyes, painting a picture distinctly different from the one he had previously seen.
He speaks for the first time this meeting, breaking the tense silence, his words directed at the Weasley quartet against the wall. "His guardians…were they really that bad?" He asked quietly, desperately hoping this is another one of the twins' pranks.
The twins share a look before one nods and leaves the room. The other one starts speaking very solemnly.
"In his second year, we had to rescue him from his own house. There were bars on his window and his alone, there were upward of 10 locks on the outside of his door, firmly bolted with a cat flap in the bottom of the door to pass his daily can of cold soup.
When we jimmied the locks to get his trunk from the boot cupboard under the stairs, I noticed a child's crayon drawing pinned to the inside of the door, proudly stating 'Harree's Room' and more pinned around the room. Worst of all, there was a tiny cot, barely big enough for a house-elf and it, and the ground under it, were stained an ominous reddish-brown, as if some substance pooled there frequently enough to stain."
The first twin returns, holding a small stack of rather dirty looking papers, he sets them on the table gingerly, and carefully places them side-by-side.
"This one" he says, pointing to one with words written in a cheery yellow, "Was pinned to the back of the door. The others were hanging on various nails that were sticking out at random places in the cupboard."
The drawings included a giant blob of brown and black in a vaguely human shape standing next to a child's interpretation of a motorcycle, a purple-clad dancing stick figure with what appeared to be upside down white Christmas trees on either side of its head, and a red headed stick figure with green eyes and black haired stick figure, also with green eyes, holding hands with a shorter black haired stick figure with green eyes and a exaggeratedly large grin on its face bearing the caption 'Harree's Familee'