To Tread in Shadow

by Jyrnn

Divergent from the first incident in OOtP: Prophecy will only bend in as much as it can to be fulfilled, a reckoning threatened only grows stronger, and Harry Potter’s first Kiss is not Cho Chang, but a dementor.

Title: To Tread in Shadow 01

Author: Jyrnn

Spoilers: All five books. OOtP will be slightly reword for what will soon become obvious reasons.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor any of its characters. They are the sole intellectual property of J. K. Rowling and Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. I gain no monetary reward for this exercise and do not intend any copyright infringement.

Warnings: Character death (sort of) but all will be revealed in time. Definitely dark since I am dealing with dementors and their Kiss. Also an original, I hope, take on the Dementors and their obscured mythology to follow.

Summery: Divergent from the first incident in OOtP. Prophecy will only bend in as much as it can to be fulfilled, a reckoning threatened only grows stronger, and Harry Potter's first Kiss is not Cho Chang, but a dementor.

"Blah" speech

Blah thought

The rest narration.

Chapter 1: Ever Been Kissed?

Late Spring 1996

A keening wail brought him to consciousness and with it a thick fog of confusion settled around his mind as he struggled to orient himself. His last memory was a feeling of piercing cold on an otherwise warm day. It was more than that though, the cold wasn't really real. Now it seemed as if his bones themselves were struggling to remember the warmth of life. No fever or winter's day could hope to rival the chill the near naked Harry Potter felt. His body seemed strange, both newer and older than he could recall. His limbs were sluggish, roped with thick muscles foreign to his skinny frame yet his skin bore a remarkable tautness and wear. He lay upon his back, cold, smooth stone for his bed. He was in darkness in a unfamiliar room sealed from the light. Oddly the confinement did not bother Harry. On some instinctual level he knew every inch of this new place. Every groove and niche had been mapped by his mind sometime in the past. Yet how could that be? I've never been here before thought a perplexed and frightened Harry.

Alert now, he became fully aware of the ragged scream that had awakened him. It resounded throughout the confines of the dull, grey room so much so that its source had become obscured. It was mystery until Harry's hand brushed his throat idly while it made the journey to clap itself over his ringing ear. It was he that had screamed. Indeed, he was still screaming. The ache of his exhausted lungs and vocal chords emerged to underscore the reality of his situation. He had been shouting. Shouting at the top of his lungs. Screaming even in sleep for longer then he was conscious. Even being aware of it didn't immediately halt his desperate cry. In a panic he scrambled to a crouch and huddled in a corner of the cell waiting for his wail to die. It persisted for another minute, taking on a plaintive note to match the growing desperation of the young wizard. Then it died in Harry's throat through some delayed psychosomatic function. Then his body began to both tremble and tingle. Muscles and joints twitched and jerked randomly while Harry felt a blanket of pins and needles drape itself over every inch of his skin. He could only huddle there, in the corner, wondering what was happening as his body betrayed him. For quite some time he quivered. Sometimes silently, sometimes not. All the while in the dark.

Then the door opened wide and lighted poured in. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Harry was bathed in a light he did not shirk from. With it came memories long thought lost. Long wished lost. In a blinding flood he knew and was horrified.

9:36 pm August 2, 1995

The event happened on the warmest day of year. As the sun sank lazily beyond England's shores, the pleasant, dulling heat of the day had lingered in the twilight air. All too quickly events converged on the horrible spectacle of his last mortal moments. A noise like a gunshot was soundtrack to his cousin's chubby face alternating between bristling rage and deathly fright. Like a pair of sharks the dementors had circled them both, only Dudley unaware of the dark specters that loomed beyond his perception. Wrongly he assumed the rising terror had somehow been Harry's fault and reacted in typical Dursley fashion: Violently

So it was that Harry's wand lay somewhere in the alley between Wisteria Walk and Magnolia Crescent instead of in his hand. Harry himself was lost, plunged in the darkness that was a dementors greatest asset. So it was that Harry had no defense against the stalking figures as he half ran, half dragged himself down the street. So permeating was the darkness of their aura that soon Harry's prolonged exposure had stolen the strength from his limbs. Even then he kept moving, crawling when his knees buckled beneath him. He hurt on so many levels. Physically he had the expected abrasions and cuts of someone dragging himself down rough asphalt. This harm paled when compared to the mental trauma Harry suffered. The two dementors, unseen to the Muggle world, seemed content to flank Harry with their drifting gait. The two creatures wafted gently on the wind while they dug painfully at the young wizards psyche.

He did not know how long it lasted, nor did he know how his shouts failed to attract any notice. His memories after the flight of his cousin and before his last breath were only a general impression of dread. The worst events of his life mingled together in a all-consuming blend of fear, anger, grief, and death. Dead parents, dead Cedric, risen Voldemort and wretched Wormtail populated Harry's world with accusatory and contemptuous glares respectively. Until, in a merciless act, the dementors granted him the mercy of oblivion.

Harry lay upon his belly convulsing as the dark power of his tormentors took complete hold. In his peripheral vision he imagined he could see the faint twinkling of the heavens above. In the distance a slight crack of dying purple heralded the last seconds of the day until it, too, fled into darkness. Then a cold, scabbed hand grasped his shoulder and wrenched him upright with impossible strength only to slam him, stunned, back to the street Another pair of vise-like hands grasped him firmly about the knees and pressed them tightly to the rough surface beneath. The other seized heavily upon Harry's torso with enough force to paralyze his already weary arms. All this was achieved with a kind of perfect synchronization with the only telling signs being the unforgiving pressure and the ominous whisper of their cloaks.

The second leaned over him and stared inverted at him with its features obscured by the dark depths of its cowl. Intermittingly, between visions of Voldemort rising from Wormtail's cauldron and the faint pleas of his mother, Harry could hear a ragged gasp, as if the dementor was forcing air into organs which had long lost practical use. Finally when he was too weak to move and all he could do was watch as a detached and yet a very keen observer to the violation of his very soul; they dropped their mask. Harry could see them for what were. Decrepit husks, mummified not by heat or bog or dryness but by their hate and hunger for all that lives and loves. Gaunt, grey and stricken by time and some horrible driving instinct in them he saw the face of fear. Sunken features with seemingly myopic eyes shrouded by pale milky cataracts. As if even the very color of their eyes had once been drained leaving only a dull grey pile of impossibly mobile refuse. Dark white pits framed by tarnished cheeks and mangled hair. A putrid breath of foul air kissed his cheek as the thing leaned in intimately close. The creature's jaw cracked audibly as it shuddered to open its maw.

If he could have, he would have fought. But against a Dementor's Kiss, there is no defense. Only the crushing numbness of his spirit's slow death occupied his focus. Harry had the vague impression that he should be in agony, but all true sensation had been muted when the creature's figurative fangs had been bared. Before he slipped beyond the realm of mortal consciousness Harry was struck by the sheer void into which he stared. Which he felt. And then, which he was.

Then very quickly Harry's body began to change. Altered by some preternatural factor it shriveled and blackened in a matter of minutes. The limbs curled into an almost fetal shape. Still the process progressed. The skin took an a mottled hue and scaled in places while in others it toughened like old leather. Whatever was happening to Harry, it was as if the very moisture of his body fled in fear leaving him completed desiccated.

Moments later he tore free from numbness and came shrieking into the night air. But he was different. He lacked form, a body. He could still sense the world around him but it was as if he was a fog of jet black vapor. Not free floating though, not by any means. He was tied to a body, his once human shell that was now deteriorating. Joy had been stripped from him and all that remained was the hide his failure from the world. Laid bare with only two grim witnesses, the one that made him and the one that helped, Harry experienced the weight of his new curse.

He was hungry and later he would learn what type of nourishment he sought.

Desperately he tried to stir himself. Jostling the corpse-like form below him and trying frantically to revive himself. Eventually he did, enveloping the listless frame and, by instinct, animating it with his own will. He was ready, after a fashion, to hunt. His body floated in the center of the animated cloud that was quickly settling into the shape of a mantle. Almost in approval his two silent witnesses seemed to nod and they drifted ahead of him, ready to teach him to obey the whispers in the dark.

Sometime Afterwards, Early Fall of 1995

Two figures met clandestinely. Of course in this place clandestine was the default mode of operation.

"This is a bad idea, you know that right?" said one

"Grow a spine. It's all we have left. Do you think THIS will do the job. THIS THING. Some savior."

"No I mean its bad. Amoral. This is not the way it should be. Not they way we fight the dark"

"Who's to say he would have won anyway?" That stopped the first short.

"I mean, he wasn't really fit for it. Hardly more then a child."

"Well who's to say he would have lost?"

The other gestured, "You certainly don't think this is winning, do you?" There was a pause. "Thought not."

"What do you reckon will happen to Umbridge?"

"Nothing. She is Fudge's creature through and through. She is protected. For now."

"Do you think there will be an inquest"

"No, we would not be involved if this was meant to go public. An inexplicable disappearance, like the old days."

"Then what do we do?"

"Keep it locked up and keep the whole thing off the books. I'll write to Azkaban. They have a specialist. He can do what we need."

The first nodded and left his colleague to his task.

End 1

Author Notes

First off an apology to any of you that care about my other fic but it became abundantly clear that it was dying when OOtP was released. I have plans to overhaul it in the future but I let the project get out of hand in my whimsy.

An idle plot thread has become an obsession though. A simple "what if" to what would have happened in Order of The Phoenix if Harry had not been able to A) connect with his wand and B) fight off the dementors. I have my own take on a dementors, a view that is constantly evolving, and I hope you enjoy it.