The Dementors froze as the stones spread out.
Harry let the stones fall, smiling as he watched them disappear into the darkness below, their splashes muffled by the roaring wind.
"Harry!" Ginny's voice was weak behind him. "Harry, stop!"
He thought he heard Ron and Draco yell as well, but Harry decided they could just watch.
Stepping to the hole in the wall, his bare feet feeling the cold of the broken stones scattered underneath, he faced the Dementors.
"You stupid, black-robed floaters," he growled. "I spent so long scared of you, like a little child whimpering -"
He released a Patronus so strong that light ripped through the night air, freezing Dementors in its glare. Two Dementors were torn in half, and they gave horrific screeches as their robes burned into ashes and were blown away.
"Oops," Harry smirked. "Guess I'm a little strong tonight."
The memory of the fall came back, sitting in Snape's Defense against the Dark Arts class and feeling tired of the taunts. Then he had performed so strong a spell that it temporarily blinded most of the class. The pleasure that had rose in him then – a brief flash of achievement and joy – was nothing to the delight and throbbing energy which spun through his whole body now.
He had never felt so alive.
Another Patronus split the darkness with painful light. But this time, the Dementors were in fast retreat. They flew through the night from the prison, hissing and screaming with rage.
"Sorry," Harry felt his lips snarl to the side in his best Snape smirk, "you were in my way."
Next, he concentrated on pulling the rocks from the walls behind him. The magic felt easy as did the action – like pulling small stones from a muddy bank, much like the work he had done in the gardens over the summer –
"No!" Harry bellowed. "No more memories!"
He waited for his own magic to attack him, the remove the traces of painful images and thoughts, the human feelings that continuously hurt him. He would forget everything that had happened to him, good and bad. He would begin fresh and new.
Harry paused a second, holding hundreds of stones in the air.
It didn't work. He still had all his memories. There were all there – his first year of school, saving Ginny from Tom Riddle, Snape adopting him, Luna over him in the darkness, meeting Gringwad, Snape returning . . . a thousand memories still there, still vivid, still alive.
He gave another roar and brought down the whole side of the prison, removing the walls of many floors that spanned down into the darkness below him.
With a quick arm movement, he maneuvered the stones into steps below him. They organized themselves like obedience magnets, fitting together into steps that disappeared down towards the sea. Dark matter floated down around him and twined itself into a black robe. His feet felt like they were ensconced in boots.
He meant to step out on the stairs and walk away, leave without a look back.
But he did look back.
Ginny was against the bars of her cells, crouching on the floor with her hands over her head to protect herself from falling debris. Ron and Draco occupied similar poses. They all looked terrified, and Harry caught the shine of tears on all their faces.
He wanted nothing more than to slap them. How glorious it would feel to order them to kneel before him, make them swear loyalty to him, demand they become his Deatheaters –
"Piss off, Voldemort!" The words came from his mouth before he realized he had said them. "I'm not you, and I'm not Snape or Gringwad. I'm Harry Potter."
He marched back into their prison room and tore the bars off Ginny's cells.
She tried to scramble back, but he levitated her out to the steps.
"Wait, mate!" Ron gasped, but Harry flung his barred door open.
"Take care of her. Help Hermione," he told Ron.
He sent Ron out to the steps before approaching Draco.
Unlike Ron and Ginny, Draco stayed frozen in fear as his bars splintered. His one eye stayed fixed on Harry. "Your – your face," Draco choked. "You have his face."
Draco should have learned to keep his opinion to himself. Harry considered flinging him outside, maybe making Draco hang off the steps for a second and dangle there to let him scream. But – Harry sighed – he had promised Narcissa.
"Shut up and take your eye back!"
With an outstretched arm, he pulled Draco to him, ignoring his struggles, and thrust his open hand over Draco's eyepatch. Light and heat exploded from his hand, and Draco screamed as he clawed at Harry's wrist.
When Harry pulled the eyepatch back, Draco's new eye blinked back at him. It looked almost the same as his other eye. The color was the same, about the same size, more of diamond-shaped pupil and a weird twitching movement.
"Good enough for you," Harry tossed him out to the steps.
As he walked out the prison himself, he saw Ron grab Ginny's hand and motion to Draco. "Come on, run. He's – he's gone mad."
So rude, but Harry didn't have time to protest. He started down the stairs, pulling stones with him as soon he stepped off them. Loose stones were send down to keep the stairs going down.
"We're so high," Ginny cried as she stumbled forward with her brother.
"Just keep moving," Ron ordered. "Keep going, and do not look back."
Draco was right behind them, but he did look back occasionally.
Harry thought about yelling at him to watch where he was going, but they didn't have much time. The Dementors were edging back; some had returned to the prison to buzz around the broken side where prisoners were peering out, shrieking for help, or avoiding falling stones from higher floors.
Harry thought he saw Finberg on one floor, but he wasn't sure. As much as he wanted to flip the sadist out to fall down into the water, he didn't have time to go back and wreak revenge.
The closer they got down to the water, the softer the wind got, but Harry stopped the stairs about ten feet above the sea.
Ginny looked back at him finally. "We-we're miles from land. Do you want to-to make a stone walk to there?"
Harry stopped, about seven steps above them. "A boat is fine."
The boat they had come over on would have returned to the land and that was too far away. He pictured the dock at the prison. He remembered the wood between the rocks. It would work.
It took a few seconds, but then pieces of wood were flying towards him over the water. He pictured a barge, square and flat, and the wood obliged by arranging its pieces into a barge about ten by ten feet.
"There you go," he levitated them, one at time, onto the barge.
He lowered himself on the barge just in time to hear Draco say,
"How is he so powerful? It's the Dark Lord all over-"
"No," Ginny interrupted, "Hermione was right. It's all the sacrifices. She and Snape said -"
"Shh," Ron hushed her, his eyes wary on Harry.
So they wanted to talk about him did they?
"I think I'll take my own ride," Harry said coldly. He motioned two stones down from the hanging steps and moved them a good space from the barge below floating down to them. He let the stones all fall, enjoying the tremendous crash they made as they tumbled down. Then he sent the barge and the two stones he stood on forward, purposefully moving them a little too fast so the others had to crouch down to keep from falling off.
The ride back to land was much faster than the ride over had been. And as for the mood, well, Harry felt fantastic. Maybe his friends were not as enthusiastic, but he could ignore that. They were getting away from Azkaban.
The docks came in sight, but Harry didn't slow their speed, even when he saw the crowd waiting there. Of course, Azkaban had send news of the prison break to the mainland, and they had probably contacted the ministry. The Wizarding world could pull itself together quickly when it wanted to track him down, but it took years for them to admit that Voldemort might be back. Just lovely.
He only slowed the barge when it was feet from the docks, and Ron, Draco, and Ginny toppled over when the barge hit the main dock.
Most of the Ministry was there, wands out, terrified faces.
Harry stayed over the water to face them. "Here," he motioned to his friends, "I brought these as collateral, but now that I'm here I realize I don't need them."
He made the three stumble off the barge, glad to see they were shaking. Rather than attack them, several members drew Ron, Draco, and Ginny into their protective fold. An older female even soothed Ginny to get her to stop trembling.
"What do you want?" Scrimgeour demanded.
"From you, nothing. From all of you, nothing. I want to be left alone. In every sense of the word, in every possible way, I want to be left alone."
The crowd rippled with tension, but Harry went on.
"I wanted to go back to Hogwarts, you said no. I wanted to stay at the manor, you sent me to prison. It's funny how weak and pathetic you are, prime minister. I could split your skull open before you could get a tiny little spark out of your wand."
Another ripple. A stunning curse shot at him from the crowd, but he lifted a hand. The curse dropped and fizzled out with a gurgle into the water.
"Sad," Harry remarked. "You know, it amazes me that when you get to the bottom of it, wizards are so remarkably frail and helpless. All this power, and you restrict it, tie it up, forbid it. No wonder Voldemort played you as a fool."
"Harry!" the crowd parted, and Snape stepped out. "Harry, wait."
Ignoring the pain that swelled in his throat, Harry kept his voice dull and sarcastic. "Ah, look, the man with no plan. I bring him back and he cowers like the rest of them. Stop gasping, people. He wasn't dead, just scattered. Voldemort broke him in pieces. Or I did. One of us and he crumbled like a biscuit."
The sound of his own voice felt so good, and this brave, fearless Harry was a lot of fun to play. Harry with nothing to lose certainly had a good deal to say.
"I know a lot of you," Harry glanced over the crowd. "I've seen you here and there, in the Ministry, at Diagon Alley, some of you have children at Hogwarts. You knew who I was, the Boy who Lived. Did you know about my life the first eleven years? Did you know how hard the last few years at Hogwarts were? Did you know how I prepared myself to fight Voldemort? He's dead because I stepped up. Me, with my friends," Harry purposefully avoided Snape's gaze. "We did it. The rest of you could sit in your little houses with your pathetic, simple lives and just trust that someone would step up."
A movement came from the far right of crowd. Suspecting it might be an ambush, Harry lifted his arm and blew the barge out of the water with a blast that tore the wood apart.
The movement stilled, but Harry felt only contempt. "You all showed up here to stop me again. Did you have a plan? Did you? Let's just put out this one fire and pretend that we're in control? I can't even think how small your thinking process must be. How do you find your way to breakfast each morning?"
"Harry, listen," Snape broke in.
The temptation to obey was strong. A tiny ray of hope still existed in him that Snape might have a plan. Maybe somehow Snape had figured something out, something that he had decided not to tell Harry for a very, very good reason.
Unbidden, the image of Snape's lab rose in Harry's mind – all the books, pictures, graphs, and scribblings on him. Snape had tried to explain it away, but it stung terribly still. Snape had made so many decisions without informing him because who cared about Harry Potter's opinion? Harry Potter, apparently, existed to be a puppet, a yes-man to follow orders without comment and trust blindly that others knew better than he did.
"I'm leaving," Harry announced.
He put his hand out and dragged Scrimgeour through the air.
A din of protest rang out, but Harry kept Scrimgeour level with him, holding him two feet away. Scrimgeour tried to aim his wand, but Harry forced his arm out so the wand pointed to the side.
"I'm leaving for good," Harry kept his voice calm. "I want my friends to say out of Azkaban. If I hear anything about them going back to prison, I will come back to destroy the whole Ministry of Magic, down to its last brick. And then," Harry pulled the prime minister a little close, "I will drive your wand through your heart until I feel it burst."
He waited until fear dawned in the man's eyes. Then Harry released the magic holding Scrimgeour up.
He watched the prime minister drop into the water.
Then Harry Apparated.
It hurt, a hard, jerking motion that made him stumble to ground when he appeared in whole. He got and glanced around. He was in a dark field with the grass brown and the trees bare. A few sheep lifted their heads to look at him and then trotted away. Nowhere was there a shore or even the sight of water.
"Take me as far as I can go," he closed his eyes and willed himself forward.
His next sudden appearance didn't jar him as hard though he did have to step forward quickly to catch his balance. He was down a county lane with lots of mud and broken pavement.
But which way was south? He jogged down the dark road until he found a crossroad. A nearby sign said Glasgow with an arrow to the right and Edinburgh with an arrow to the left. If he remembered right Glasgow was to the west of Edinburgh, meaning he should go straight between to go south.
Bracing himself, Harry forced himself to keep Apparating. The pain lessened as he got a better grasp on the mechanics of the jump. Without a map, he had no idea how far he went each time, but it had to be more than several miles because he recognized nothing from his previous position, not even the cloud formations against the moon.
He went through a city, almost getting hit by a car before vanishing again. He appeared over water, but before he could drop, he Apparated himself forward. More water, so he kept going. Two more Apparates, and then he landed on a rocky beach. He glanced back quickly, guessing he had gone over the Channel.
So he was France now, right?
He saw a sign: Les Arbres. Yes, definitely France.
How far south did he want to go? Out of Europe altogether? But that meant crossing the Mediterranean Sea, and unlike the Channel, it wasn't a short distance. It stretched hundreds of miles in some places.
He tried to remember the geography classes before Hogwarts. The shortest way to get across the Mediterranean was the Strait of Gibraltar which only had about eight or nine miles from, uh, Spain to maybe Morocco? That sounded right, but that meant moving southwest into Spain.
He spent the next few hours in constant movement. He stopped to steal a map and some food from one town, willing the objects to come to him without a busy vendor noticing.
The sun finally rose, and Harry had to be careful not to be spotted. He avoided big cities, often walking around small towns until he caught the name of where he was before angling his next Apparates to keep away from any large names on the map.
The French countryside gave way into the Spanish farms. The air grew warmer and the plants weren't as brown. Greenery colored the world and most houses he saw were white with tile roofing.
Crossing the Strait proved difficult because of all the boats moving in and out from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea. Anyone catching of a young man appearing over the water and disappearing again would be sure to talk.
Harry finally figured the easiest way would be to buy a ticket for the voyage across. A stolen wallet, a pinched set of clothes, a quick wait at a line that boasted of speaking Spanish, English, French, and German, and he had a ticket.
He walked out to the dock with other milling tourists. The sun soaked the pale wood with a warmth that he had not felt in ages. His short-sleeve shirt let the sun shine on his pale arms, and he was glad he had nabbed a hat and sunglasses that masked his face and provided some shade from the sun.
He was alert as he boarded the ship, but so far nothing had happened. No one approached him, no burst of magic surprised, no sudden movement caught his attention. Just average tourists of all walks of life, all ethnicities and languages, but all Muggles as far as he could surmise.
He meant to sleep on the boat, but it was so short a trip that he only got about 20 minutes before the ship was docking.
"All right," a plump American woman dug into her purse, "time to get out our passports now that we're in Africa."
Her two children kept staring out the window at all the boats, but Harry stealthily got up and crept away. He had no identification, let alone a Muggle passport. He had been so busy worrying about a magical attack that he had forgotten that Muggles had to deal with the burden of correct paperwork.
Head down, he waited until almost everyone had exited before Apparating to the other side, landing in a shipping yard beside a giant metal cargo.
Morocco was beautiful, alive with color and tourism, but Harry had no time to appreciate its splendors as he made his way farther south.
Only when he stopped for a bottle of water to parch his intense thirst did he permitted himself to look around. It occurred to him as he gazed up at pictures and advertisements in foreign languages that he hadn't really been anywhere. When going to Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and the Weasleys' and Snapdragon Manor, he thought himself wide-traveled and adventuresome. Yet, here on another continent, he realized how little he had seen of the world.
Draco had traveled around the globe. Hermione talked about her parents and their family jaunts to France and Italy for long holidays. Even Ron had been to Egypt.
How could he, the Boy who Lived, the savior of the Wizarding world, the one who had defeated Voldemort, how could his life be lived in such confined, limited spaces? And craziest of all, he had been happy only a week ago to stay under house arrest at the manor. That silly afternoon in the woods, edging to the limits of the wards to call Gringwad, scared he might step wrong and be outside of the invisible boundaries.
And then he had obediently gone off to prison to live in a tiny cell.
Meanwhile, a whole world lay unseen and undiscovered beyond the cold world of England and Scotland. Even now as he stood on the continent of Africa, he hadn't stood on the other five continents. What might America look like? How cold was Antarctica? What did food taste like in Brazil? What did an open-air, spice market smell like in India?
Harry spent the next five days making his way down the coast, passing through Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea. In the coastal towns, he blended in with other tourists, taking wallets from wealthy people to pay for food and a night at a hostel.
The closer he got to the equator, the hotter the air got. Never before had he sweated so much, pouring bottles of water down his throat in desperation. It was almost as if he was trying to sweat his old life out.
The Apparating wore him and he went to bed early in the raggy bunks of the hostels, listening to the guy in the next bunk, a Liberian native, laugh that the sun was too much "for the vite Engleesh boy."
It was off the coast of Ghana that something made him stop in his incessant journey south. The villages were filled with wooden boats and old temples and castles lay inward, marking places of the slave trade from centuries before.
He remembered learning about slavery in Muggle school, but the teacher had brushed over it as a problem solved long ago. It had not been real then.
No it felt real, especially when Harry found himself standing outside of Elmina Castle, the first trading post built below the Sahara. They were the first to build a dungeon to hold people before they were sold into slavery.
No matter where he went, there were markings of the cruelty that people did to each other. For years, centuries, millennia, maybe since the beginning of humankind, there had been suffering.
He couldn't go inside the castle.
However, he did make his way to a nearby fishing village. There children ran around. There mothers watched from doorways while fixing dinner. Men worked repairing boats and fishing. Young women flirted with young men. An old man sang a song from a porch stoop.
Harry sat on a pier and dangled his feet into the water even though it stunk of fish.
A little girl, probably around five, ran up to him, ignoring the calling of her mother. She had tight curls of her dark hair and deep dimples.
Harry smiled at her and held out his hand.
She hesitated but then placed her hand on his, her dark skin contrasting against his somewhat sun-burnt white skin.
Then she giggled and ran back to her mother.
Harry turned back to stare at the water, the ocean stretching before him.
He knew no one here. He didn't speak the dialects. He had no money, no possessions.
He could hide here for a while.