Count of Azkaban

Chapter 6

Harry closed his eyes and his mind went back to the single event that had changed his life.

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Thirteen years ago, after being imprisoned in the prison of Azkaban, and the strange light enveloping Harry.

Harry came to his senses. At least what he thought were his senses. In the beginning he felt disoriented. He did not know where he was and it felt different. More than that, he felt very different. Slowly, the thoughts started to enter him and painted some pictures. It was almost as if it was somebody else's life. He remembered himself at the department of mysteries, the veil and Sirius. He remembered the headmaster showing him the prophecy and his reaction.

He looked and himself and could clearly see that he had been grieving. He had lost the one person who had loved him unconditionally, the one last person who could be called his real family, his Godfather. He saw that the grief over the death of his dead godfather had left him detached from the world. Sometimes, almost clinically, he had felt that he had grown weaker and thinner. There didn't seem to be any energy in him and he felt as if the weight of the world had been thrust on him.

Now, however, as he felt himself, he felt light as air and strong. Somehow, he knew he could take over whatever the world threw at him. The knowledge was more instinctive than objective. He had faith in himself. All this happened while his eyes were closed and hardly a second had gone past the moment he had come out of his coma.

He slowly opened his eyes and found himself looking at an enormous tree over him. It must have been at least a hundred feet tall. He was lying under it on some soft grass. Suddenly he heard a rustle and found himself turning sharply towards the sound. He was astonished that he had gotten up and turned without seeming to move. He was astonished to see what he saw and with all the things that he had seen, it was saying something.

Just opposite to him, there sat three people, wearing light purple robes and looking very imperial. He was sure this must be a dream. Because if it wasn't, they sure looked like the caricatures of the high elves he had seen in the wizarding mythology book he had once read.

His eyes grew big and he was too astonished to speak a syllable. That was until he heard on of them speak.

"So this may be the lost descendant?"

Something inside him snapped and he knew no more.

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Stout entered Harry's room in his personal apartment. He had a unique bond with Harry. And he could feel the stress and grief coming out of him in waves. Like all the good friends, he had an instinctive knowledge of what to do. He placed a relaxing charm on Harry and walked away. Things had been waiting for him for several years and a night more won't do much harm.

The thought today wasn't of much importance, but one day, he would pay dearly for fighting this war so carelessly.

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Ginny herself had turned in. Artie had been put to bed and he was now sleeping like an angel. Like all the kids, despite his more than average power and intellect, he was not much different from other kids. After having nearly escaped death, a kiss and a hug later, everything was normal in his world. She was almost jealous of this feeling of invulnerability that most kids have.

She herself had been very apprehensive about the entire ordeal today. It had not been an easy thing. There were several factors to her uneasiness. She had been uneasy about realizing the flimsiness of the thread of life. Although she had lost nearly everybody, Artie was her one safe haven; her one place where she felt shielded from the bitterness of the world at large. But today, she had been very close to loosing him.

Even though she was afraid to think about it, she realized it herself that had it not been for the miracle, she would have certainly lost her son today.

The second thing she was uneasy about was the security of the estate. She had always remained very positive about the safety of her residence. The world outside today was not a good place and Draco had his enemies like any other rich man. His closeness to the king, and being the head for wizard financial world, further highlighted the issue. Hence they had the best charms and wards placed around here.

As a matter of fact, they had been promised several experts that even the king would need some time to break through the wards. But today, a stranger had broken through at his whim and passed the wards as if they did not exist. Despite being thankful for the same, she could not be, but apprehensive, of the lack of proficiency of the wards.

But the things that were not letting her sleep were not the two very important things mentioned above. It was the picture that Blinky had handed her. Try as she might, she just could not shake the image out of her mind. She had an odd feeling that she knew him and more than that, trust him.

In the present world, it was a very dangerous thing to trust somebody; more so with her life, and even more with the life of her son. She was not sure where the feeling came from but she was sure that it was there. She never knew when she lost herself to sleep.

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A few hours later, or what could have been a few hours but might as well have been a few seconds for all he knew, Harry woke up and found himself in the same place as before. Just this time, he was not sure if he was hallucinating or not. But something in him made him turn again towards the odd looking people he had seen before.

It was now that he recalled the elongated faces with sharp nose that all of these people had. And he recalled the last thing he had heard, 'descendant'

"Ah. You are awake now?" he heard a voice which was strangely musical. At the same time it had much power and authority underlying the jovial tone. He had never heard someone speak in such a manner before. The voice was a strange balance of power and humility with a dash of humor thrown in. He again looked blankly at the people in front of him.

"Yes. It would seem so." He said almost automatically while trying to come to his senses. Frankly, he was still unprepared. But then, the Gryffindor courage had stepped in, and he now found himself with his foot in his mouth. He turned towards the person he saw had moved his mouth and hence, would have spoken the words he had just said. Still, admonishing himself for his lack of courtesy and had a feeling that a few good manners would not go unnoticed. He added, "I am sorry if my earlier words were a bit rude. But I am at a loss here."

By now, what he would later find out was his slytherin side, came out. He let the open ended sentence just hang there.

If there was something he was good at, it was fighting and surviving on pure guts and luck. He had his instincts working on almost overtime now and he was not going to the messages they were sending him.

The man who had spoken initially nodded and came a bit closer to Harry and said, "Good. I can feel you coming to term with your situation. Let's take a walk."

Knowing he had no other option, Harry followed.

A few minutes later, it was the other man who broke the silence first.

"Hello Harry! My name is Cilera and I am what you might have heard of as a high elf."

Despite his doubts and apprehensions of the same fact, Harry could not help but be surprised at this.

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Draco returned to his manor and was very nervous. He had not received the intimation of any response from the count and the uncertainties were making him nervous. This was a very important deal with him and only if he could deal with it properly, he may just enter the rarified field of a few really powerful wizards of the world. As a matter of fact, he would become politically even more powerful than the king. Though lord Voldemort may be the political king, he would become the king of the financial wizarding world.

It was this nervousness combined with apprehensions and musing that Draco overlooked to see the status scroll which appeared magically everyday upon his arrival. It mentioned all the activities of the house. It was a secret no-one knew about but afforded him the luxury of keeping up with movements of his household and more specifically, his spouse, Ginny. He had long been suspicious of her activities with the resistance, but didn't want to know of them. He kept his eyes close for plausible deniability.

He had been the one who had lusted after her due to her beauty and nature. But most of all what attracted him towards her was the unattainability. He could have had anybody but her and that was because he had to have her. He had bought the silence of her estranged family (Ron & Percy) with a few galleons and a political posting, defying all of his family. He could not just tarnish her image now without damaging his.

Anyway, he would look back at the fates play much later on, because the one day that there was an anomaly, he did not look at the scroll and simply banished it without further thought. After all, nothing had happened in the last several years.

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Harry stopped walking and stood as if rooted to the ground. Cilera looked at him and smiled.

"Come now! I knew it wasn't that much of a surprise. I knew you at least suspected it"

Harry could do nothing but nod.

"Come with me and let me tell you a story." Cilera nodded towards a path which had appeared in front of them and both of them started to walk through it.

"I can make out several questions which are emanating from your mind. Let me tell you what I know." Cilera said and then started a story which would change the world.

"As I just told you, we all are the members of a race which you know of as the high elves. Nearly two millennia ago, we parted ways with the wizard race. They were too destructive and arrogant. Slowly, as time passed, our magics started to clash. All of us, the elves, have a natural affinity to magic and we ask it to aid us in leading a better life. The wizards, however, were humans who somehow gained access to this energy and like everything else, they started to abuse it. For several millennia, we co-existed but at the time of parting, the wizarding kind started to abuse the magic by using it for evil intentions and purposes. Our magic reacted badly to it we were left with very few options.

I can feel you asking yourself as to the relevance of this information for you, but I assure you it is very important." Harry, who had undoubtedly been thinking the same, was amazed at the remark. As he looked back at the one sided information, he saw several instances when the same had been done. He was sure that he was right. The elves were surely either natural leglimens or telepathic.

As if hearing his thoughts again, Cilera said, "Yes Harry. All the elves are naturally telepathic. We are not able to be leglimens for our magic refuses the corruption of the source. Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, as I was saying, we had very few options. The most powerful and wise elves met, and pondered upon the issue. They agreed unanimously that we had only one option available to us, he had to separate our world from the wizards."

Harry stayed right where he was. He was shocked into it. Over the period of last several minutes, his world had been totally shaken. First, he appeared at a place he does not know yet feel peaceful in. this was in spite of the fact that the last thing he remembered about himself was that he had been drowning in grief cursing his headmaster Dumbledore.

Over that, when he did wake up, he saw himself in front of people he had read about as myths and no more. More than that, they just happened to be telepathic and now, the worst of all was that this single elf had somehow taken the task of telling him the history of wizard-elf relations when all he wanted was to return. And now that he was working up the courage to ask him the same, he was coolly informed that most probably, both the worlds had parted.

The shock had been too great and all he could think of was that he royally screwed.

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Cilera, on the other hand, knew exactly was going through the young man's mind. It was very important to make this young man understand the new life which had been thrust upon him once more. He had seen through few of the memories of the young Harry and had read a lot about him through their sources in the human world. Looking at the young man, he recalled what had happened to him in the past few hours.

As Cilera had just told Harry, the elf world had separated from the wizarding world nearly two millennia ago. Since then, there had been near peace in the world. However, one of the things about separating the worlds was that they still required someplace to anchor the new world from. It had to be very powerful place to be able to withstand such a huge amount of magical displacement. So they had chosen the most powerful place they knew, their meditation chambers. The same meditation chambers which were at the bottom of the magical prison of Azkaban.

Elves were the beings of light with hardly any crime from them. It did not mean that there were no accidents, but what it did mean was that there were never any evil intentions in them. However, when one did make a mistake, instead of a prison, they were sent to the meditation chambers. These were very special and ancient chambers which were rumored to be the very source of power of elves. What they did was show the images to the person staying in them which signified the reason he was here, rather what it showed them the events which were out of order with the natural flow of magic or good. So anybody inside saw what he had done and would be shown the same again and again until they accepted the wrong they had done and accepted it.

It was a place of coming in balance with oneself. It was a place of harmony. It was a place of coming to acceptance. It was a place of coming into balance with all the magic.

Author's Notes:

This chapter is just the first part of the chain of events which show us how Harry turned into the Count of Azkaban. Hope you like it.

Thanks for appreciating the story and letting me know: and your reviews as well.

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