Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Unfortunately.

Okay. So, the first time didn't come out as great. I'm not familiar with the mechanics of yet. I'm experimenting and so I hope you like it! Enjoy!

Chapter One: Bitter

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'I don't like this Mione.'

'It's going to be fine.'

'This is madness... even by our standards.'

'We have no choice.'

'I know.' he sounded helpless as he watched her. 'Mione… let me do it first.'

'You're too important to lose Harry…' he opened his mouth to rebut her but she continued. 'and it's too complicated, I'm not even sure it'll work. I made the whole damn thing and so I understand it better than anyone else and so if something went wrong, I can make adjustments. It has to be me Harry.'

'I know…" he sighed as he leaned forward and held her hand. "... just… make it perfect… be safe.'

The very first thing he felt when consciousness came to him was pain. Pure unadulterated agonizingly persistently present Pain. Everything hurt. Like he got pulled in all different directions and was somehow put back together but is not quite right and will never be right ever again. The pain was consuming and for a few seconds the pain was all he could think about.

'What kind of stupid idea was it this time?' Because, really, that's the only reason he could think of that lead them, yes, them-because it's always them, here.

His mind felt like it was ripped to pieces, his head felt heavy like he was wearing a helmet made of lead. There was an invisible weight in his chest, making it harder to perform the instinctual inhale - exhale – inhale – exhale - inh—ughhbreathdamnit-ale! His breathing was heavy and there was something on the back of his throat, something thick and warm and tasted like iron. It also took him a while to realize that it was blood and it was slowly blocking his airway.

He was too weak to cough and spit it out.

'Oh well.'

The pain was everywhere for a good few minutes before the ingrained instinct to compartmentalize came to life. Slowly the pain was set aside, layer by layer until it was something that he could finally mentally handle enough that he could finally think. Mind over matter, just like Mione said. Mind over Matter.

He needed a plan, but first, he needs to make sure he was still alive in the first place and if he's alive then where the hell are the others? Where the hell is Mione? What even happened? Why the hell does he feel like shit? There were so many questions but he needed to answer those he can answer.

Let's just say his alive. There. He's been dead once and it didn't hurt this much, so it was safe to say that he's still alive… maybe. He's injured, that much is for sure. He could feel the hot liquid he knew was his blood around him. He couldn't feel his legs and he could feel the intense cold that seemed to just appear and disappear out of nowhere. The combination of the hot and cold made his head hurt when he started dwelling on it trying to distinguish which was which. He decided that he should let it go for now.

He was laying on a hard surface and he traced it with his numb fingers. Wood. He could tell. He weakly tapped the wood, feeling that it was thick and also likely to be very heavy, so maybe he really was in a table. Who's then?

His eyes refused to open. They felt as if they were swollen shut and considering the overall condition of his body, there was a big possibility that it was.

So, he was alive. He's injured and it's bad. He's in some table or flat surface and… was that voices?

It was as if on que his awareness of the things around him sharpened. He could feel them all around him. They were murmuring silently to themselves. Some were talking and some were muttering under their breaths. He struggled to hear what they were saying.

'I already told you! We found him outside in the snow bleeding and already half dead. The only reason we found out he's magical is that when I tried to touch him, an honest to goodness bloody barrier erupted and a slicing curse came hurtling out of nowhere and sliced my hand nearly in half before I even knew what the f*ck was going on.''

One. He was found on the snow. That made it maybe in the months of November to January, February was possible but that was pushing it, still the possibility is there. Two. The barrier worked and since it was activated in the first place, that means something really bad has happened. Something went wrong with whatever it was they were doing, he couldn't remember for the life of him, and he ended up in this condition. Three. He was very much alone when he was found, screw all other information, because this particular one was terrifying and not good. Not good at all.

His mind was reeling in the possibilities of what had happened when his attention suddenly snapped back to the ones talking.

It was strange. That voice was familiar. He couldn't remember where exactly he heard it. His memories were in a haywire, every time he tries to start remembering the more everything seemed to disappear. It didn't make any sense.

'The barrier disappeared after the blood accidentally dripped into it.' He tensed when he heard another voice.

'Blood magic.' There was a hint of disbelief and suspicion in that voice. It was deep and gruff and as familiar as the other two had been.

'Yes.'

'What even made you think it was a good idea to touch the guy without further investigation? Have you learned nothing Black? Constant Vigilance!'

It was as if a sudden energy rushed through his body and his eyes opened and he gasped. Compartmentalization went out the window and everything was suddenly very much hurting once again. He sat up; his chest was protesting. The crunching of broken bone was something he never got used to but was very much familiar with. His vision doubled and blood poured out of his mouth into his lap and into the table that he can now see that he really was in. He coughed, loud and deep and ugly and vomited water and saliva and blood and then he couldn't breathe. No air was coming in and then he felt someone pushing him back down. He heard someone yelling and someone screaming. The screaming belonged to him. His eyes snapped to the people crowding around him. He couldn't distinguish any of the faces but he knew that there were many of them there.

His movements were not his own now. He was having a seizure. He blacked out after that, although not before he mentally mused the level of fucked upness they were all in this time and that this kind of death was so not any world cool enough and so death better stay the fuck away from his soul.

Albus Dumbledore has seen many things in his admittedly long life. Nothing much surprises him anymore. He'd seen myths come alive and men turn into monsters and magic, dark and light. He'd seen and lived to tell the tale. He'd seen many things and he studied and understood them, and so when a young man comes out of nowhere with wounds that should've killed him the moment he received them accompanied with layers upon layers of scars and black markings of what seemed to be a cross between an ancient language and runic symbols or a tattoo gone wrong because of how messy and utterly unintelligible it was, it was safe to say that he was surprised. It was Madness in black ink and magic tilting between light and dark and for the life of him he could not understand a single thing of it. There was method in this madness, of that he was sure, he could feel the magic around it cackling like lightning and humming in warning, if he decided to mess with it, he might lose more than he bargained for.

When he heard the news from a vexed and suspicious Alastor Moody about the young man that Sirius Black had found, sprawled bloody and wounded in the snow just outside the Order's safe house, he didn't expect the man to be so… dead looking. Pale and cold that if he couldn't see the rise and fall of the man's chest, he would think that the body laying on the bed is just that – a body.

The safe house was under Fidleus, and so for a man, young enough to still be at Hogwarts by the looks of it, a seventh year perhaps, to so suddenly appear just outside of it, was alarming. The young man wasn't simply outside the safe house but inside the wards as well. Wards that he created himself, and he didn't even feel any disturbance while all this madness was happening.

The young man looked hauntingly like a certain Potter he was sure was somewhere here in the safe house. He remembers seeing Sirius Black and Remus Lupin's pale faces as he went in. He remembers briefly seeing the wide-eyed look in Lily Potter as she covered her mouth as if to prevent herself from screaming and the horrified expression of James Potter as they watched the unknown young man open his mouth in a scream of pure agony as his body convulse on the table. Poppy, who arrived him, had done what she could. He remembers the way she looked at him when she was done bartering with death, she looked at him like she has seen something she never wanted to see again in her life.

Never seen a case like this she said Albus, I don't know how he's still alive it's just not possi—she cut herself off at that.

Broken femur and right humerus, four broken ribs, crushed left hand, back with third degree burns, slicing curse on the leg, slicing curse on the shoulder, just missing the artery in the neck with only a few centimeters. A collapse lung and a brain hemorrhage and bruised liver. That's not even everything yet Albus, he's severely dehydrated, he's showing signs of not properly being fed for months. Potion overdose and potion and medical spells resistance, I had to give him nearly three sleeping portions for him to fall unconscious and it's… it's not pretty Albus… I don't even know where to begin with the amount of dark magic I can feel in his wounds…

There was nothing much to do if he was being honest. Other than of course, wait for the young man to wake up and answer their questions. He took a deep breath and went out of the room, nodding at Alastor Moody who had volunteered to ward the room just for safe measures. They still didn't know who the young man is and these were dark days they were facing.

The wards would prevent the young man to go out of the room and it would alarm them if he so much as tried. He felt for the magic wrapping it self on the walls for a moment before he resumed walking. He had a meeting to attend to.

Regaining consciousness didn't happen immediately. It was slow and draining and painful because of the onslaught of senses. The pain and the numbness interlinking and morphing into something he couldn't explain and the great weight in his chest was just getting worse. It was better though, than the last time he woke up and that was good. That meant between the last time he was awake and now, someone had healed him.

The light was dim when he opened his eyes but even so, it took him a while to adjust his vision and take in where he was. Ah… he mused. He knew his injuries were bad this time and so he decided moving immediately was a very bad idea. He wiggled his toes, numb and sour but bearable. He then tried his fingers yep, still there, he thought with poorly concealed dread.

It took him a long time to gather the strength to sit up and when he did, he was sure that if the pain wasn't enough to stop him, his body would give up because of too much exertion. What the bloody hell happened?

Whoever healed him did a good job though. Minus the dark bruises he knew littered his body, it only now held the phantom pains of wounds that weren't there anymore. He knew his back was burned and that his ribs were broken together with his leg but now, all they were was sore. Very sore, of course, but at least it was movable.

He stood up and the world spun. He persisted of course, because he wasn't called stubborn for nothing. He took a step when the world stopped spinning and when nothing happened, he took another and another until he was confident enough that as long as he doesn't lose balance, he was fine. The room was small and void of anything other than the bed and a table. There were no windows and he was sure the door was warded. He tried summoning his wand and though he expected it, he was still a little disappointed when his wand didn't come.

He had a feeling he knew where he was and if that was correct, and he was pretty sure it was, then that means that their very stupid plan had worked. How much it worked though, he wasn't sure because as far as he knows, he's alone. He didn't like being alone. He goes a little bit darker when he's alone and so being alone here is not good, which means that he has to find them, preferably now and if he is to find them, he needed to get the hell out of this room. Let's start with opening the bloody door.

The wards were buzzing under his hand when he laid them flat on the door. There were 6 there, one on top of the other and he was a little bit offended on how utterly simple it was before he reminded himself that technically during this time, this was advance and no, Mione wasn't the one who made the wards and anything Mione didn't do was pathetic in his opinion. He deactivated the wards, taking pleasure on preventing the ward that was set to alarm the ones who put them up that he was deactivating it, to do its job. He opened the door with no resistance and started, making his way out. Limping was more like it; it was pathetic really. He'll do something about that later.

He grew more and more certain about where he was as he got closer and closer to the voices he could hear. They were arguing and it sounds like they have been for a while now. The wards on the door of the room they were in where as pathetic as the ones placed in his' and he scoffed as he disabled it. He opened the door and went in without anyone in the room noticing. They were busy preventing a fight from breaking out.

"Come at me boy and let's see if your bite measures up to your bark!"

"Oh you'd like that do you?! I always knew you steered in that direction Moody!"

He almost chuckled at how the said man became red in the face and began pointing his wand at the taunting black haired man. He almost chuckled at their antics, if only he didn't feel so annoyed of how childish they were being. Here he was, a potential enemy and they didn't even notice him come. This were the people fighting the first war. His smile was bitter as he mused, it's no wonder the duty of winning the war fell to us.

He closed the door with a loud bang and only that made them notice him. His eyes were hard when he looked at him. He was aware of how bad he looked but still, he wonders how he may have looked for them.

Dark haired and pale with wounds and scars not from the wounds they'd seen him with. Standing tall with shadowed face and glaring Avada Kedavra eyes. Mione always said he looked alarming. She said that there were times when he should take special attention is easing his eyes because he got that look on them that promised tales of suffering. He sees those kinds of look in her eyes too and he's sure that they see them in his'.

"Good Evening." He said. It broke the trance and then all wands were pointed at him.

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