Part I – A Wizard's Betrayal

Prologue - A Gift from a Visitor

Magic is not ours. It was brought into our plane by the goddess Danu who imbued the land with its power. Today it is of the earth. It comes to us from the earth and returns there once expended. When we hold it within us, we are only borrowing that which belongs to everyone and everything. It is what we do with that borrowed magic that is truly ours alone. We lend much of ourselves to the expression of magic. It is how we use magic that is truly ours alone.

It is because of this fundamental nature of magic that identical spells may well have very different results that are purely dependent on the caster. If you asked five friends to cast the Orchideous charm, you will most certainly be presented with five very different bouquets, which I'm sure we can agree is a always a wonderful way to start the day. Does one of your friends' conjurings contain yellow daisies? Ask them to cast DecorumFloris. The resulting mural, drawn as it is from their personal expression of magic, will most likely also contain those same yellow daisies.

- L.S. Lovegood, TeachingsontheEthicsMagic,4thedition

Friday, March 7, 1997 – Azkaban Wizarding Prison, off the north-east coast of Scotland

The Dementors had begun paying Harry Potter more frequent visits over the last few weeks. He'd changed cells a handful of times during his incarceration at Azkaban. Until the most recent change, each new cell seemed to bring slightly easier conditions and fewer visits by the Dementors, although every time there was a change he would get a few unscheduled visits from the foul creatures guarding the block he'd moved into. He had learned the reason for that from one of the human guards. Each prison block had its own unchanging set of Dementors. Whenever Harry was moved the creatures assigned to his new location wouldn't resist getting a taste of the famous Harry Potter's misery. But after a short while the Dementors would follow orders and stay away. Until recently, Harry's guards were for the most part human. Early on in his incarceration he had been told derisively that this was because he was considerably more susceptible to the Dementor guards than most people were. This was hardly news to him.

Recently things had changed again and unlike previous moves, Harry's latest relocation had not been one for the better. In his latest cell, the last few weeks had been hellish. In this new cell there was no bed, or bedding of any kind for that matter. His toilet consisted of a small hole in the corner of the otherwise bare cell. Meals seemed to come much more sporadically and consisted of only mealy undercooked oats. He didn't ask what the dark lumps were. His water consisted of a half cup served with meals plus whatever he seepage he dared drink from the small collected pools between the stones that made up his floor. But worst of all was the increased presence of the Dementor guards.

He knew they floated by his cell at least hourly. Despite his constant exposure to the creatures, he still regularly passed out when they approached him. As when he first encountered the creatures in his third year at school, Harry still relived his mother's death whenever they floated by. But nearly as bad as that memory was a newer one. Now he also relived Voldemort's resurrection in the graveyard in Little Hangleton. In that memory he always relived Cedric's death, Voldemort's resurrection rite and horrible fear that he was going to die at the end of the ritual. But at Azkaban, the horrors were not limited to those daytime visits. The Dementors loved to prowl the cellblocks when the prisoners were asleep. They fed hungrily off of the emotions from the nightmares their visits induced.

But for Harry, the horrors didn't end at the conclusion of reliving his worst memories or terrible nightmares when the Dementors finally left him alone. Invariably another voice would fill his thoughts and dreams afterward. It was a voice Harry knew belonged to Voldemort himself. Following Harry's imprisonment, it had not taken Voldemort long to realize he could navigate the link been Harry's mind and his own. The dark lord loved to hear the boy scream in torment. Afterward he would often taunt the boy, calling him weak for weeping at the loss of his parents; calling him stupid for mourning the loss of Cedric, a boy whom Harry had barely known; telling him that he was enjoying Harry's slow decent into madness.

Harry woke up most mornings in a cold sweat, shaking in fear. It was only the mental exercise he did at those times, thinking of those few whom he cared about who were still alive, that kept him sane. Invariably his thoughts focused a single person. Most often, Harry would break down in tears at the loneliness he felt from her absence.

A day ago Harry had awoken from a very different dream. He couldn't recall most of it, but he did recall a visit to his cell by a small yellow bird and then a visit from his friend Hermione. Even in his encroaching madness he knew it couldn't been real. Such a visit was impossible. The rest of the dream had been lost to him, but for the first time in weeks, Harry had started the day filled with happy thoughts. The Dementors of course had recognized this and spent even more time than usual near Harry's cell. By noon, the faint memory of that dream and the happy feelings it had filled him with were gone.

The horrible waking memories, constant nightmare and visits from Voldemort were taking their toll. In his lucid moments Harry knew his recent relocation to this more oppressive block in the prison did not bode well. He reasoned that something had happened and whoever had acted in the past to insure his survival in Azkaban had changed their minds. Harry knew he was going to die.

oOoOo

Harry's subconscious registered the sound of small bird's chirp. The occasion of such an unusual sound in Azkaban caused the young wizard to awake with a start. Searching for the source of the sound, he slowly crawled from the far corner of the cell to the bared door. He seldom ventured to this side of the cell as it brought him closer to the Dementor guards. From the floor, he looked both ways down the cellblock. Despite having long ago lost glasses, he was able to spot a small yellow bird, a canary perhaps, flying from cell to cell, peering in at the occupants. Every so often the bird seemed to sing a short sad song to whatever figure it found in the cell. Once or twice the bird seemed to flit back away from the cell it was inspecting either in horror or surprise. After the small yellow bird had inspected half a dozen cells it seemed to spot Harry and shot towards the boy and flew towards his cell.

"Hey little guy, what are you doing here?" Harry asked the bird in a horse whisper. "You should leave before someone tries to catch you." Harry guessed that many of the block's residents would delight at a morsel of meat, even if it were raw. The bird ignored his advice and entered his cell. As soon as the bird was inside, it alighted on one of the rocks that protruded slightly from the wall. Once it landed, it began to peck at one of its legs. Seeing this, Harry asked it, "What are you doing little fella?" Although Harry didn't see it from his position on the floor across the cell, the bird pulled loose the binding on a small pouch, no larger than four grains of rice and dropped the bag on the floor. As soon as the tiny bag hit the floor, it magically expanded into a rather well worn book-bag, the type used by the students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This task accomplished, the bird hopped off its perch and landed softly on the floor. As soon as the bird touched down it quickly transformed into a girl. Shocked at the transformation, Harry skittered back into the corner of the cell, pulling as far away from his guest.

Harry's visitor almost seemed to expect this reaction. "It's alright Harry, it's me," she said softly, crouching low to reduce the difference in height between the two. He noticed that she had momentarily wrinkled up her nose at him. Both Harry and his cell smelled awful.

It took Harry a few seconds to register what his eyes and ears were trying to tell him. "Hermione, is that you?" Harry asked shocked at her presence in a voice scratchy and thin from disuse. She looked very familiar, but was bigger than he remembered and her hair was now a medium blond instead of light brown. Also the bushiness was gone, replaced by an airy feathered appearance.

"It's me Harry," the girl answered.

"How did you get here?" he asked

"I told you yesterday, don't you remember?" She bent over and grabbed the book-bag she had brought with her, and began to rummage around.

"No, I don't." Hermione frowned at this, realizing Harry was in worse shape than she had thought. She also couldn't help noticing that the boy was shaking and twitching. She hoped once she freed him, healers would be able to reverse the apparent neural damage she'd been told he might have suffered from long-term exposure to the Dementors.

Hermione found what she was looking for and pulled it out of her bag. She unstoppered a small vial and handed it to Harry. He took a sniff. "It's a strengthening solution," she explained. You need to be stronger to travel. I wish we had a couple more days so you could take more, but this second dose will have to do." With that explanation, Harry drank down the potion. "As to how I got here, it was the same way Sirius broke out. I've been training to become an Animagus."

Harry stared at the witch unbelievingly. It had taken both Sirius and his father three years to pull off that off. He thought he must have been rather far off on his estimation of the term of his imprisonment. "How long..."

"A little more than a year and a half." Her voice faltered, "I'm sorry it took so long. Sirius and Minerva said I was forcing the form too much. I guess I wanted to make sure it was something useful."

It took Harry a few moments to realize that Minerva must have been his former Transfiguration professor, Minerva McGonagall. That Hermione was now on a first name basis with her was another indication that much had changed while he had been locked up. "I…I can't believe you did it so quickly. What are you doing here?" he asked.

"We need to get you out of this place. Fudge has been arrested and is no longer the Minister of Magic. We think he was the one who ordered the guards in this place to keep you alive. Fudge's replacement is a man named Pius Thickness. He's either being controlled by Voldemort or is loyal to the man."

"So my survival is no longer desired," Harry furnished. The look on Hermione's face confirmed his assumption. "I figured something like that had happened."

Hermione pulled a necklace from the book bag and hung it around Harry's neck. It had a fine and delicate chain that was silver in color. A pendant hung from the chain about two inches across. One side of the pendant had a three dimensional relief of a serpentine dragon. On the reverse were unfamiliar designs that looked vaguely Celtic or Druish in origin that were most likely runes. "This is supposed to take you somewhere safe. We hope it will breach the prison's wards."

"How?" he asked.

"It's powerful and not something we think the Ministry has seen before. If that's true, we don't think they could have warded against it. Take this bag," she instructed the wizard. "Your wand is in there as well as directions to where I'm staying. I've also written down everything that's happened while you were in here. There are a few other things in there you might be able to use when you get to where you are going."

"Where is that?" Harry asked. Before Hermione could answer, an all too familiar chill began to fill the air. "Get out of here. If they catch you…" Harry started.

"I'll transform back and fly out as soon as I activate the pendant," she said, pulling out a wand on a chain around her neck.

Harry felt the sensation of the formation of tiny ice crystals on his skin and felt himself beginning to grow faint. "Go!" he yelled.

Hermione hesitated just a moment. She had no idea when, or indeed if she would ever see him again. "Harry… I love you. I love you with all my heart. I always will. Please remember that."

Following her declaration, as her wand tip moved quickly towards the pendant, Harry replied, "I love you too 'Mione." The moment the wand touched the pendant Harry was thrown back into unconsciousness.

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(Author's Notes)

This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling and various multinational corporations. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

This story is rated T for violence. I reserve the right to increase the rating at a later date.

Reviews are welcome. Constructive criticisms are especially appreciated. Please keep your flames to yourself. I do this for fun.

This story is self written and edited. If readers spot an error, they are free send me PM's and I will correct my mistakes. Whenever I post a new chapter, I may also post a corrected version of the previous chapter.