Chapter 2: Kryptonite
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or this chapter's namesake.
A/N: This should look more familiar to fans of the original. Though, this is a partial rewrite, partial revision of two chapters that are now one.
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The chipped and cold stone dug into his back, bringing fresh scratches as he writhed about. Dimly aware, he simultaneously writhed in torment as his right hand traced words scratched into the wall. At one point he'd known what they were, but that was long ago. The spilled water goblet rested beside his head as the pain forced him to continue movement. They were hungry. The moonlight fell through the open window, playing a line of light across the hole full of refuse, and then down the floor, across his stomach and chest.
He continued tracing the words with his right hand until he saw that there were words scarred onto it too, just like on the wall. They were different though, elegant and terrifying, painful. He gasped the first clear breath in several minutes as the icy cold fled from the room. Blood was seeping slowly from several cuts across his back and his right hand was back to calmly tracing the words carved into the wall. It was dark but for the small line of moonlight.
Then the cold came back reinforced. His back arched off the stone floor as unbidden came the meaning of the scratches on the wall to his mind. I've walked the void holding an antler and a rat. He could feel the sweat on his body icing over, and it was without true understanding of anything but fear that he screamed. A voice chuckled from somewhere to his right, but no one was there. He writhed on his side, a scratching his face on the stone floor. Then the cold closed over him like a coffin. A coffin, his mind told him. He fell from simultaneous fever and cold into fog, screaming.
"Not HARRY," he screamed at the top of his lungs. "NO!"
The Dementors passed by his cell and then held at the wall between his and the laughing man to his right. Harry seized something between an instinct and a thought and ran for the cot in the corner of the room. A paper thin pillow lay at the top. He held it over his face, trying to strangle, suffocate the pain and cold. The fabric dug at his raw face even as he screamed into it, his legs thrashing against the wild inside of him. It was a monster who bit at his stomach and kicked at his lungs.
The cold intensified even more, and he moved the pillow long enough to gasp, and it felt like sucking in a hard cold breath on the coldest winter day. A rasping cough erupted from his lungs, his whole body shook and lunged. The cot upset itself, and Harry again felt only cold stone beneath his face. And he screamed.
And then, very suddenly, Harry was again.
He was aware that he was face down on the stone ground, his cot atop him. The pillow was wedged under his chest, though it was hardly noticeable in thickness. He was aware again, that he was hurting nearly all over. He could remember darkness, convulsions, screaming. He remembered fog, and he remembered his mother's voice. He remembered Dementors. Harry lay there on the floor beneath his cot, shuddering and swearing, his throat raw and most muscles in his body sore.
He had to think. He had to feel something. The first thing to come to his mind was not fear or sadness but anger. Clenching his eyes shut, he traced the source of the anger. The eyes shot open as a face formed in his mind. He screamed again, this time in pain as he tried to get up. He felt so damned weak. Collapsing back to the floor, Harry only snarled.
To say that he hated Cornelius Fudge was not enough. It was not down to one man to decide what was wrong and what was right. How had he done it? How had Fudge taken such control over everything. Harry had no idea. Dumbledore had tried to tell him, three days ago? Two days ago? Two years?
Harry leaned up and pulled the pillow out from under his chest, placing it under his head so that the raw cheek didn't press against stone but against fabric. Then he closed his eyes and shifted his right leg, dragging a bare foot against the stone beneath him.
A whisper escaped his lips, bone chilling in its meaning and all implications. It was a single word which had the power to strike fear into every English Wizard alive today, even if just a small bit of fear. It was a word that made a big friend of his shudder and close up mentally… it was a word Harry hated saying.
"Azkaban," Harry muttered, pained. That was it. He was in Azkaban prison.
Dumbledore stood a man confused for the first time since Harry had known him. As they prepared to lead him away Harry had been allowed one "Final" talk with his Headmaster, during which several things had been revealed to him. Harry didn't understand most of it, but it boiled down to this: somehow Dumbledore had been removed from his spot at the head of the Wizengamot again, and when most of the members of the court had rebelled against the decision, Fudge had—with no more than a vague wave of his hand—disbanded the longest ruling council of Magical England. Harry also knew this: no one was happy about it. Fudge's continued existence came only because of a sect of loyal bureaucrats.
The next piece of the puzzle was the attack on Number Four. It had been perfect. Harry remembered vaguely the shards of a farce of a trial. There had been Fudge and Umbridge in a dark room, and Percy Weasley beside them, a scroll of paper on the table in front of him, his eyes never leaving it. They believed he'd gone willy-nilly casting curses. They claimed he had been attempting to intimidate his family and it had gone wrong, and that he had stunned them in an attempt to escape punishment.
The aurors had arrived even as the last of the Death Eaters were gone. They had found Harry, not too badly injured but exhausted on his doorstep. Every house on the street, he'd been told, had been full of Stunned muggles. This dangerous behavior of doing underage magic was only made all the worse by his blatant muggle abuse. Declaring him unfit to be a member of the wizarding world, they'd taken his wand for use at his trial and later destruction. He was expelled from Hogwarts and to spend the next thirty years in Azkaban. When released, he would never be allowed to own a wand and would need to register with the Ministry and apprise them of his movements.
Later, when he could finally move, Harry sat, huddled in one corner of the room. He heard the sound of screams, far off in the distance. The Dementors had left his cell to go and feed off of others. People were crying out in anguish, mental or physical and sometimes both. As for Harry, he almost missed the days when the Dementors would merely call up the sounds of the last night of Lily and James Potter.
"Azkaban," he groaned again. He leaned his head against the wall and listened to the man in the cell beside his laugh as if everything in the world was so damned funny. A fevered sleep claimed him for a period of time undeterminable. When he woke he knew something seemed very different about his little cell. Harry put his finger on it by slowly testing each of his senses.
Instead of the smell of his own waste in the bucket in the corner—charmed to empty itself once a day—was the smell of food. Food was something he absolutely could not pass up in this place, though it was neither as good as the food at Hogwarts, or as copious as the amounts the Dursleys used to allow him as a child on those days when he wasn't being punished with no food. Harry climbed slowly to his feet. Raw and sore, they shuffled over the stone floor to the area right beside the cell door. He looked down at the plate and water goblet and picked them up without hesitation.
Cold, tired, he fell back into a sitting position at the half-way point in that wall, directly beside the end of a sentence scratched into the wall by a desperate, angry man.
I've walked the void, holding a rat and an antler.
Some times, when Harry found himself strong enough, he wondered about that sentence. This was not one of those times. Right now he wondered about how long it would be before his next meal.
~PoD~
The ever impressive form of the nearly ancient Albus Dumbledore stood up at the head of the table, raising his hand for silence and calm. The Order meeting was in chaos at this moment as Bill and Charlie Weasley physically strong-armed the younger Weasley brothers away from Professor Snape. Severus, for his part, was trying to aim his wand over one Weasley's shoulder at another, though Dumbledore thought it barely mattered to him what Weasley felt the brunt of his anger.
"Piss off," Fred Weasley roared. "Let me at him Bill, I promise I'll make my ejection from the Order worth it."
"Let us go," George agreed, slamming an elbow into the side of Charlie's head in an attempt to get at Snape.
"Everyone, calm down," Dumbledore said softly. Almost as soon as he had said it, Fred bowled over his eldest brother and was moving toward Snape, wand drawn. Severus already had his wand back preparing to curse Fred, even as George verbally lambasted him.
"You bloody git, you greasy, slimy..."
"SILENCE!"
The room froze—that is, those who weren't already frozen watching the display—including Snape and Fred. "Now, Severus, I warn you, one more word against Harry will result in your removal from this meeting, Misters Weasley, if you disrupt this meeting again, you too will be removed from it. Now, all of you will SIT! We haven't got time for this asinine dissention." The commanding tone in his voice was enough that all present, even the angry Snape finally acquiesced his request.
Grimmauld Place's kitchen finally fell back into relatively calm silence. Dumbledore paused, taking a moment to take a look around the room. Severus, to his credit, was immediately rapt with attention though cleaning the blood from his face. Mundungus Fletcher feigned his disinterest at the situation and pretended to be reading over a paper in front of him. Nymphadora Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt sat beside each other, opposite of Remus Lupin and Arthur Weasley, each of whom were attempting with some success to look serene and ignorant of the scene that had just taken place. This was more than could be said for Molly Weasley who couldn't decide if she wished to glare at her children or at Severus.
"Many of you have not only been out of the country for the past week, most of you have just returned this late hour, so I must begin this meeting properly by filling you in." Dumbledore finally sat down himself, sighing softly as his legs groaned in protest. Smoothing his beard he contemplated for a moment before deciding on straightforwardness as a tactic for his next statement. "Harry Potter is in Azkaban prison."
That was how Dumbledore silenced the mutterings of each and every member of the Order who had amassed. For a moment, only a silence reigned over the whole house as shock settled on everyone in it. It was perhaps the most quiet the house had been since the Order had gathered to fight in Harry's defence at the Ministry of Magic. There came the sound of the stairs outside being rushed down, and Albus' eyes slid to the kitchen doors pre-emptively.
The silence was shattered more effectively than any glass or mirror could ever be. Shattering is actually a very tame way to put what happened. The doors to the kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place burst open as if a strong gust of wind had hit them, and two redheads and a brunette swarmed the room.
"WHAT?"
Though half of the Order had reacted by drawing their wands, Dumbledore and Snape moved not an inch. Albus stared in silence at the new arrivals for a couple of moments, as Severus tried to pretend that they didn't exist. Dumbledore gave a somewhat mischievous smile and then spoke; "It seems, in the rush of calling you all here, I had forgotten to put the necessary protections on the doors. So be it, sit down, you may listen to this meeting as it effects you all." Not one to go quietly in this situation, Ron grumbled, prompting Hermione to speak out of turn.
"Why is Harry in Azkaban?" she asked in a mixture of shock and distress that not many had seen from the teenager.
"Granger," snapped Severus, suddenly alive with indignation, "be silent here, you hold no right to words within this meeting." The twins tensed up, as did Ronald Weasley, so that Dumbledore knew it best to diffuse the situation immediately.
"Be quiet," Dumbledore snapped, turning his gaze momentarily on Snape. No time to placate anyone. They had to act fast or everything could crash. Dumbledore squashed a fidgety feeling down. Plans made must be kept, needs must.
"As I was saying, Harry Potter now sits in the prison of Azkaban. The day of the battle at the Ministry was supposed to be the end of the Minister of Magic's work against me. I had left the Ministry believing as much, but was proven sorely wrong. As soon as he had the room to himself, Minister Fudge passed several laws and edicts.
"As of five minutes after I left the room, he had disbanded the Wizengamot, claiming that they would be a liability here in a time of war. He has declared the Wizarding World to be at war, giving him all the powers of a Wartime Minister. He has chosen to abuse those powers. This has naturally ruined his reputation. Minister Fudge has just effectively put himself singularly in control of the government. With this amount of power, Minister Fudge has created himself a problem. He is in effect, a dictator. There is no one to check or keep him within his limits, and he is free to stretch his power over Magical England.
"He did just that three days ago now. Harry was," Albus Dumbledore paused, closed his eyes, and sighed in a show of weakness that none in the Order had ever seen from him. "Unfortunately attacked outside of his aunt and uncle's house. From what I was able to extract from his tightly sealed lips, it was a group of Death Eaters. I am still investigating how they managed to reach him there, when there should have been many protections to stop this."
"What happened, Albus?" Minerva McGonagall asked, suddenly alive as she hadn't been since she arrived at Grimmauld Place. "Why hasn't the Prophet reported this?" Ah, Minverva, Dumbledore thought, the voice of reason. If only reason worked with these people!
"I do not know why it has not been reported, however, this is what I know. Harry fought off the Death Eaters as best he could, but briefly before the Ministry arrived on the scene, they departed. The Minister, choosing—like the year prior—not to believe in Harry's innocence in the matter was the Judge… the Jury… and in this case, the Incarcerator. He has sentenced Harry to thirty years in prison, and removed his wand from him."
Ron looked at his sister and then at Hermione seeing that they shared the same sense of shock and disbelief. He felt struck dumb. Harry being imprisoned was flat unthinkable, utterly ludicrous. Harry had delayed Voldemort's return to power. Harry had duelled Voldemort. Harry had saved Ginny's life and stopped the attacks on Hogwarts. He'd had done all of this good at the expense of his own innocence. He had done all this and in return gotten nightmares, sleepless nights, insults and smear campaigns and now he was imprisoned.
"There is more," the room waited with baited breath. Hermione was no longer sitting. She was pacing. The room didn't seem to care either, though Ron took her vacated seat and waited for the mutter to die down around the table. He clenched the edge so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"He is being held in a high security cell, and there is not a prisoner around him who was not a Death Eater or muggle killer. I've seen his block. Lucius Malfoy is on his right, Dolohov is on his left, and he is…" There was a pause, in which Dumbledore wondered if he was divulging too much. I must not hold this back, because if he realizes this, he may need some guidance, some counselling. "Harry is currently being held in the same cell which once housed his Godfather."
Hermione made an affronted noise and crossed her arms across her chest, stopping in her pacing to turn to the table. Her face was alive with the ferociousness of a lion.
"It was only thanks to a slight of hand and perhaps some contacts, that I managed to rescue his wand from being destroyed, and it is now safely in my hands and will be entrusted to someone trustworthy while we await his release." To emphasize this, Dumbledore brought out Harry's wand and tossed it toward Ron, who caught it with the ease he would've expected from a seeker and not a keeper. Ron examined it with satisfaction as Ginny spoke.
"Release?" Ron looked up, satisfied that this was his best friend's wand he was holding. Ron pocketed it.
"Surely you do not expect me to leave Harry in Azkaban and Minister Fudge in power?" Dumbledore asked, sounding vaguely amused. "As such, I want to begin by making things thoroughly miserable for our dear beloved Minister. Any ideas?" The twins raised their hands. "Any idea not constituting bodily harm to the Minister—" Fred's hand dropped, "or my potion's master?" George's hand dropped.
"I have an idea," Hermione said, more fiercely than might have been expected of her, her eyes alive.
"Speak up, Ms. Granger," McGonagall said, kindly. "What is your idea?"
"We could… organize a protest." she said as she turned to match eyes with McGonagall. "Or if the twins can help us out…." The room from then on would swear that for the first time in history a truly devious, Weasley-ish look came to her face as she drew a breath and said; "a riot."
In the moment of shocked silence that followed, Bill Weasley spoke up. "Ron, this one's a keeper, get on with it."
~PoD~
For Harry, the rest of the day passed slowly. For some reason two or three Dementors had been placed at the end of the hall he was in, and they seemed to be very, very hungry Dementors who were intent on making rounds frequently. For his part, Harry did his best not to let the cold bother him now that he had regained control of himself. He laid there on his cot, breathing deeply, trying hard to clear his mind and failing just as much as he ever had.
His surprising reprieve from delirium had proved to be a double edged sword. Every time he tried to clear his mind their faces invaded. Cedric, Sirius, his parents, they all haunted his thoughts. It didn't help any that every hour or so the sheer injustice and fear of his current situation imposed itself on his thoughts and he found himself striking out at the wall of the cell with his left hand.
Sometimes the anger was directed at Voldemort. Sometimes it was directed at Remus for holding him back that day at the Ministry and other times it was at Cornelius Fudge. But more often than not, he envisioned the face of his headmaster. Albus-bloody-infuriating-Dumbledore could do anything. Anything, it seems, but keep his "Chosen One" out of prison for defending himself. Harry wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, if he was being purposefully left there, like a piece of meat left in the icebox until it could be reheated.
Harry wondered too, what Dumbledore would do if he saw what Harry was now. The strange fever dreams, delirium, the pain, the writhing. Sometimes the sound of the wing's door opening to admit Dementors could send him to the corner of his cell raving. He wasn't sure he'd lost his mind, but he wasn't sure he was entirely sane. That was just one more piece of the puzzle.
Harry didn't think it mattered. He had a purpose to serve and at least if he was here, Dumbledore knew where he was. It wasn't the first time Dumbledore had kept him imprisoned somewhere. He knew he shouldn't feel this way or be so suspicious of his Headmaster.
But sometimes he did. Sometimes he was.
