Chapter 4 – Recollections
"Potter... How unexpected…" Draco smirked.
"Malfoy... How unprecedented…" With that, both of them burst into a high cackle that echoed around the room. "I thank you for this … place, by the way, I'm sure it will prove to be quite useful," Harry said with a sneer. "Yes, this is the cavern you know," he said in response to Malfoy's unasked question. "Let's just say... i repossessed it, if you look around, you'll find it much grander than you left it." He gestured to the cavern's grandeur.
"So Potter, is there any reason for me to stay? Or can i be on my way?"
"Well…" Harry awkwardly began, "The battle lines have been set, and the war has begun. It's going to be brutal free for all, corruption vs. evil vs. pride vs. justice. All stations have been manned, now its time for you to choose a side. I have chosen mine and I comprise the fourth army – justice, and there is none of that in this world. You choose – me, the powerful yet evil Voldemort, the bungling and hopelessly pathetic Fudge or the meddling and unbelievably naïve Dumbledore. If you don't choose me, your memory will be wiped and you will be found in Dumbledore's office with an order, signed by me, for veristarserum. Your innocence will be proven and you can choose whichever side you wish… I give you one minute in which to decide your fate." Harry stopped and picked a comfy sofa behind him and sat down, his emerald eyes fixed on Draco who was staring open eyed at Harry.
"So… you have decided to go against your former friends, against your former allegiance. I just have to say that I never expected this…" he paused, seemed to think about it and said, "Potter."
"Make no mistake, I'm pleased, it's just that I never expected it. When it comes down to the choice, I don't need to think about it. Earlier I swore never to join Voldemort's ranks, and I won't. The side I thought I would join, Dumbledore's is not fit to have me anymore. The day I told Voldemort I wouldn't be following in my father's footsteps, that old fool threw me into Azkaban for the simple fact that my father was a deatheater. Fudge… no one in their right mind would follow him. His is a losing and ignoble cause. That leaves only one choice, and as much as i detest it, i feel it's the only way i can survive the coming years." Malfoy said, barely managing to get the words out of his unwilling mouth.
"The situation isn't very pleasant for me either Malfoy, but i make do with what i can. I am no longer Gryffindor's golden boy, you put a foot out of line and I'll have you skinned alive." Harry snarled, but nonetheless, though reluctantly, stuck his hand and, and Malfoy duly obliged by shaking it. For the first time Harry looked over the cavern in which he was obliged to stay till Hogwarts began.
As far as he could see, the entire left side of the cavern was lined with shelves upon shelves stuffed with books. There was enough knowledge stored here to satiate the world for centuries to come. It was filled with lore from every civilization that ever existed, or at least that was what Harry gleaned from the many languages he could see. Harry looked around knowing that the cavern had only revealed half of itself to him, though not knowing how he knew, as he was not powerful enough yet. He realized that he was currently in a lounge area of sorts, full of comfy sofas and so on.
He saw an armory full of glistening armor, what he thought was a furnace and an anvil surrounded by several different types of metal – for a brief second he smirked as he imagined himself sweating over the burning furnace shaping swords like some common laborer. He saw a large empty padded area, having no clue as to its purpose, he ignored it and continued to look around. Two luxurious beds stood proud behind the ring, close to a large stone slab jutting irregularly out of the smooth marble floor. He guessed that the toilet lay behind it. The one thing he did, notice, was that other than the toilet, there were absolutely no partitions throughout the cavern.
"Well Malfoy, you've seen a part of this place before, so you know how valuable it is. After all, we need to train ourselves if we're going to win this war." He said, still stunned by the brilliance of the cavern.
"Quite." Malfoy said hiding an ironic smile, after all, who would've thought the two bitter enemies would ever work together.
Harry looked at Malfoy one last time, before deciding to head for a shower ("Remember my warning Malfoy, i will not give it again.") The bathroom, he saw, was quite large and luxuriously done, if only covered from the rest of the cavern by one large stone slab. It was around a foot below the cavern's normal floor and indented around ten feet into the cavern's wall to offer some privacy. Feeling water upon his meager body for the first time in a year, Harry could not help but smile.
Harry stopped his insane laugh and looked around him, no one bothered to conceal their looks of anger and … betrayal. Oh, the irony of it all, Harry couldn't help it and descended into a sporadic fit of cold laughs again. All around him his former friends were cursing him and trying their best to insult him. Nothing penetrated Harry's ears, he heard nothing and saw nothing but pure, bright red, and suddenly he didn't see anymore, Dumbledore's stunner ensured that.
When Harry awoke, he looked around him and realized that he was being held in a relatively large holding cell, obviously the only place they could get on such short notice or Harry obviously wouldn't have been given such luxurious quarters. Smirking as these thoughts flashed through is mind, he didn't see the scores upon scores of owls racing down towards his cell. When he finally saw the owls he mouth dropped open, the gap was large enough for a baby whale to fit through, how so many owls fit through the gaps between the bars he never found out. Nor did it stay on his mind for very long as owl after owl, lashed past his face, taking no care not to scratch him as they swept fast, dropping all kinds of letters on his lap. Before all the owls had completed their task and delivered the letters, the first of the Howler's exploded and once again shook Harry out of his thoughts. By the time all the owls had left, the noise created by the thousands of Howler's all yelling their proverbial lungs off at him at the same time was deafening. Muggles kilometers away complained to the authorities about nasty inconsiderate kids who partied the night away, not letting decent people have a good night's sleep.
Only a few letters remained after the onslaught of the burning Howlers, most of these contained some sort of a curse or potion which were released on Harry's unsuspecting face the second he opened them, causing mayhem in the now cramped cell once again. There were only two letters left after all the explosions died down. Harry gingerly opened the larger of these, it was a letter from Remus, his former teacher and friend, the best friend of his deceased parent's and godfather. Hoping for some respite, Harry was brutally let down. The letter went on about how Harry had betrayed his parents, who had sacrificed themselves for him, how he should have realized when Harry attempted to lead Sirius and his friends to their destruction in the Ministry of Magic dealing a crippling blow to The Order of the Phoenix. How he had betrayed his godfather, who had also sacrificed himself for Harry. The letter admonished Harry for the choices he made during his short life.
Had anyone seen Harry's face at that moment, they could very well have believed that Harry had indeed committed the murders and worked for Voldemort. The look of pure fury on his face would have given Satan a heart attack had he seen it, and sent Hercules scurrying away like a little mouse. Unfortunately, it did not deter the traitors from causing him more pain and grief, then again they did not really see his face as at that moment it was buried in the letter, his hands grinding it away with all the force of steel. When they did not get his attention immediately, they decided the best way to do so would be to fling a hard book at his hidden head.
The book hit Harry's head just as the paper burst into flames, soon enough the book was engulfed in flames as well and burnt to a cinder near Harry's feet who did not bother to move away from the source of pain, his nerves had already been numbed, by the cuts and other burns all over him by this point. He slowly looked up, revulsion hate clearly etched all over his face, and glared at them, wondering why they bothered to meet him before he met the inevitable.
"Potter, don't get your hopes up, we aren't here to save or anything even close to that. We, are just so angry about how you betrayed us, and tried to kill us so many times, that we decided to show you what we really thought of you." Ron spat, and gestured to Hermione, who along with Neville and Ginny, dropped a trunk, which Harry immediately recognized as his own.
"Harry, we wouldn't want you to miss this, so we decided to give you a clear view of wat we are about to do." Hermione said grinning insanely, and with a flick of her wand and a few whispered words, a hole opened in the wall outside Harry's cell, and the wall of Harry's cell turned transparent, giving the beautiful view of a large, obviously deep lake stretching towards the horizon. With another flick of her wrist, Harry felt his head violently jerked to the side, as his eyes were forced open and directed towards the hole."We are currently in the oldest wizarding prison still standing, it's in Wales, and as you can see, near a very beautiful lake. Precisely why, it's no longer a prison, it's too nice, you are going to Azkaban in about two hours anyway. I just wanted to show you where a certain book of yours is going to go." With a lot of flourishing, Harry's invisibility cloak and a certain album were removed. Harry's hate filled eyes, widened with disbelief.
"Yes Harry, this is the album of your parents, your only one if I'm not very much mistaken, and as you know, I'm never mistaken." She said cruelly. Taking the book, she wrapped the invisibility cloak around it, and uttering words in Latin, bound it together with invisible ropes and weighed it down, adding invisible rocks to it. Smiling malevolently, she put a magnifying charm on Harry's wall so all he could see was the lake. Smirking she flung the two through the hole in the wall and down, down towards the lake.
From the transparent space, Harry could see the large splash created when the book hit the water and watched silently as it sunk to the unknown depths of the lake. "I'm sure neither your parents nor Sirius will want to be in pictures in a book belonging to you. I'm sure they'd be happy with what I've done, and I got rid of your otherwise indestructible invisibility cloak." She broke off into chuckles and Harry began to wail, unable to keep his misery hidden under the wall of hate any longer.
"Hedwig."
Was all Ron said as he enlarged something in his palm, smirking as an
owl cage appeared, with a very disgruntled owl in it. He grinned and
pulled a broom out of Harry's trunk, his Firebolt. Consumed by
unfounded rage, Ron magically attached Hedwig to the Firebolt, and
with a gesture, Hermione changed the view on Harry's wall, so he
was forced to see the sky. Smirking, he set the tail of the Firebolt
on fire with a simple incendio,
and threw it out of the hole, watching as it flew off into space,
slowly destroying itself, the fire drawing startlingly close to
Hedwig.
Long after he lost sight of her, Harry, with his magnified
vision was forced to helplessly watch as she slowly was set afire,
and burst to a crisp, her body tumbling towards the ground, out of
his line of sight. His wail grew only louder now, drowning out the
old DA group's laughter.
Muttering a curse under her breath, Luna turned Harry sharply around, and resorting to Muggle means, she, Neville and Ginny, with the help of three hammers, completely ransacked Harry's trunk and flung the pieces cruelly at him, adding to the scars and cuts that already plastered his body. With that all five of them left, taunting Harry as they did so. "Remember Harry, you brought this all on yourself, you're worse than a deatheater, you turned your back on your friends, you tried to use underhanded methods to kill us. You only got what you deserved." Ginny said, deriding the sobbing wreck, that once stood for all the Wizarding World's hope.
"You call me worse than a death eater." Harry spat out, hoarsely, "but at least that doesn't make me one of them. You on the other hand could easily be deatheaters, the sort of torture you just completed was just as bad as any cruciatus." Ron let out a cry of pure rage and rushed towards Harry's cell and kicked him through the bars, until Harry bled through his mouth and was lying on the floor completely unconscious. Hermione walked over at spat at the prone body before stalking away with Ron in tow.
Dumbledore looked at the scene sadly through his scrying glass. He had never expected them to stoop as low as that. Not that Harry didn't deserve it, he just didn't believe they would taint their innocence over such a waste of a human. He was disappointed owing to the fact that he had allowed another promising wizard to go over to the Dark, disappointed as now the world had no saviour. Trying to redeem himself in his own mind, he decided that the prophecy would eventually prove itself right. Maybe Harry had been destined to become another Dark Lord and in the fight for world domination, one of the two Dark Lord's would kill each other. Either way, he had to meet Harry before he was shipped off to populate another of Azkaban's cells. He sighed when he looked at the destruction the letters had wreaked in the cell, the injuries the covered Harry, and at the fact that he would not be able to talk to Harry. Deciding that since Harry was unconscious, none of this would make a difference to him, so he slowly told the unconscious body everything that was raging around in his aging mind. Just before he left, he dropped a copy of the Daily Prophet in the cell, knowing it would torture Harry's mind when he was in Azkaban.
So it was that when Harry woke up a few minutes before he had to go to the dread prison, he read the last letter he got, form Hagrid. The letter sent relief spiraling through his body and made him an extremely happy person. For a second, at least, before he remembered the others, and his face was once again set with loathing. He remembered Dumbledore's words, the ones he had said thinking Harry was unconscious, when he had been feigning it, hoping to avoid further punishment. Those words also gave him hope, the world might self-destruct before he lost his sanity. With that grim thought racing around in his mind, he made his way proudly to Azkaban. The aurors were stunned by the behavior, watching a man take his fate in Azkaban willingly, not groveling like pathetic slime, like all the other freaks that were sent to Azkaban.
Of course, they did not confess their feelings even to each other, and in their attempts to forget the traitorous thoughts, they attacked Harry, again and again, beating him, stunned that he did not even attempt to fight back. He took the hits, soundlessly and stared off into space, completely ignoring them. Eventually, disgusted that they had failed, they flung his battered body into his cell, smiling as his head hit the hard stone with a sickening crack. Without a backward glance, they shut the door locked it with the strongest locking charm they knew, the one they had been instructed to use by the Ministry, and quickly hurried off the island onto the boat awaiting their arrival to take them far away from the dementors.
When Harry finally opened his eyes, he was surprised by the fact that he felt fine, apart from all the physical pain, he looked warily around his tiny prison cell, less than a sixth the size of the one he had previously been in. He wondered why he hadn't experienced the mind-numbing effects of the dementors yet. Before he could fully process the thought, he was hit by a powerful onslaught of memories, every one that he had no wish to remember. They played like some broken tape, again and again in his mind. For the first few days, he could do nothing but think of everything he hoped not to think about, reliving his multitude of painful memories.
Finally, a semblance of the rage he had once felt, fleetingly poked its way into his mind, remembering the betrayal, this thought grew exponentially, it fought off all the other things that hovered in and dominated his mind. Eventually, once again, it conquered his soul, he only felt fury and hate. His anger only grew as he realized that the Ministry had put him in high security, there was hardly enough space between the thick iron bars, there wasn't a single window, and the wall was thick, at least a foot thick. In the beginning he had thought that this was a normal cell, but then he realized that this was not the case, another cell, directly in front of him, as if to mock him further, had a window, and thin bars. The most distinguishing difference however was the fact that there were two dementors who never left his cage, they were positioned there and seemed to love it, a fresh victim for them to devour.
As he looked across the room, he saw an insane prisoner was randomly pulling his waist length hair while kneeling down, with his head touching the floor. His room looked so much more comfortable than Harry's own, and it was then that Harry decided that Fudge had put him here on purpose, he wanted to make Harry feel worse than he would with two dementors constantly hovering around him. Once more, spasms of rage overtook him.
Eventually, however, the fortification of his hate fell under the dementor's seige, and the dementors were more than happy to capitalize on his weakness, feeding of the scores of bad memories he had that were locked up inside his mind. Everyday brought Harry closer and closer to insanity. Once again he was saved by a small feeble memory, as he remembered the betrayal. This time it was his innocence. This gave him most confidence. He decided that if Sirius, his godfather, could stave off the dementors for twelve years with this one thought, then he could as well. With this one thought driving him, he managed to keep the dementors at bay. Make no mistake, his mind was still plagued by ghastly memories, but he was still sane and maintained a weak control over his thoughts.
As time passed he grew in confidence, he harnessed his earlier rage and channeled it, using it to drive his willpower forwards, against the never-ending tide in the form of the dementors. Soon he remembered occlumency and tried to use it, but failed miserably. He began to fall back into the clutches of insanity as the waves drew back again, feeding of the despair caused by his failure. One day when he had almost given up all hope, his occlumency skills suddenly returned, stronger than they had ever been. Harry did not know how, nor did he bother to waste time or energy wondering how. He simply tried to make it ever stronger.
He could block out the dementors thoroughly and completely soon and had nothing to fear from them anymore. His consciousness slowly returned to him. He power waxed stronger and stronger. After half a year from the date of his imprisonment, he realized that the walls that protected his mind were no longer assaulted frequently – the dementors were no longer stationed outside his prison. Apparently, the Ministry thought him insane, something he did not intend to change. Soon his mental power's grew so powerful, he could mentally assault any dementors that came close to him.
Learning fast, they left him alone and did not bother to attack him anymore. They only approached his cell to quickly fling the food in and get away as fast as they could hover. Harry loved the transformation, as he could finally do something other than concentrate on his occlumency and legilimency skills. He looked at his body. The scars had faded away until they were barely visible, six months could do that to the nastiest of scars. But he had become even thinner than he used to be earlier, he could not easily be mistaken for an undead corpse. His waxy skin clung so tightly to his bones that, they could easily be made out, the dim light in the prison made his skin shine a pale light. To all the world he looked like a zombie. His thick, knotted, tangled hair, clung to his face and had grown to well below his shoulders, but rarely reached that length, seeing as they were so tangled that they hardly passed his shoulders. His nails had grown long and sharp, ending in hard points. The faint outline of a beard was growing on his face, it became thicker with every passing day, just like his powers were. He forced his mind to ignore all physical pain, and the limitations that came with it.
Finally he decided his powers were strong enough, and used his mind to explore the prison - searching for anything with which he could make a focus – something with which to cast spell. He was stunned when he detected another powerful presence residing in the prison. Its power far exceeded that of the few, generally low level and adequately weak, aurorsl, who had horrible job imposed on them. Harry decided to explore with caution from then on, but kept a mental note of the location. Eventually he found wood, something he had searched far and wide for – as only wood could contain a core and control it. He grew ecstatic that day, the day that marked the beginning of his ninth month in exile.
Finally he began to expand his mental powers, he tried to manipulate physical objects with them. He was pleasantly surprised when he found out that this was indeed the case, though he could not do much apart from lift the tray of food from the bars to the back of the cell, a paltry four feet. However, with all his effort and willpower stressed on this one point, he could eventually do much more – fling rocks at passing aurors from totally different directions, making them curse and scan the entire floor, searching for the guilty criminal. They never found one, they always passed Harry's cell, thinking him insane, they always left frustrated and angry. Harry, just smirked in the dim light and was never noticed.
The day finally came when he felt he was strong enough to break out of the hellhole. He knew he needed a staff or a wand, and on a whim decided to make a sword too, so much easier to inflict pain on a traitor with. With everything gathered, and done, he walked out of the hole in his destroyed cage and left Azkaban, without so much as a backward thought.
By the time he had gone through his year in hell, he was out of the bathroom, fully clothed and not knowing it. He was dwelling on the betrayal, and felt the old fury consume his body again. He fingered his belt and felt the sharp blade of the sword, it gave him little comfort. Draco finally chose this inopportune moment to speak, "Potter, I've been meaning to talk to you…" He was cut of when Harry suddenly spun around, his actions dictated by his old hate, before realizing what he was doing, he unsheathed his sword and swung it at the man in front of him with all the might he possessed.
