Disclaimer: Again, I do not own the magnificence that is JK Rowling's creation. This little figment of mine shall be taking a darker turn as it runs its course, so I hope you shall take this as due warning. I don't usually write like this, ever, so if you have any helpful tips or hints you'd care to bestow, please feel free.

And I want to give the most heartfelt thank you I've ever given to a one Moonlight-6056 for being my first reviewer ever. You are wonderful and I send you a virtual basket of cookies. If you like them. 

Coming King

Chapter Two

"Before we begin today's session, class, I'd like you all to take a moment to please welcome our special guest, Mr. Harry Potter."

Harry's eyes jerked up off the floor to see over a hundred sets of eyes swivel around to look him over. He waved a weak hand at them before quickly refocusing his attention to the clipboard he'd been doodling on before the instructor had narrowed him out. He'd been hoping that he'd be able to pass through the class quietly without a scene being caused, but that did not appear to be the case. He was currently seated in the very last row of the Psychology and Sociology classroom of Piedmont College where he was sitting in on the class of one of the finest departmental heads of the human mind in the world.

Supposedly this little excursion would help him gain a few insights into the type of person they were trying to find back home, but Harry didn't think much of the idea. So far it had only caused him the faint, Portkey induced nausea that he'd grown accustomed to. The real reason he'd been sent away, he knew, was to keep him out of everyone's hair for a while so they could get some work done. Everyone was starting to get annoyed with him haunting their every step, begging to be let in on some actual fieldwork. He was tired of being hidden away from the world, being protected from the big bad war. So he was getting to be an eyesore, a pathetic little figure who just needed to be thrown a bone every now and then to keep him happy and out of the way.

"Mr. Potter has been sent to us from the Police Force in London so that they may glean some of the vast knowledge," the teacher nodded to his class, "from your project presentations." He directed his attention towards the quiet man in the back of the room to explain. "They merely have to lecture on the topic they were assigned to, I'm sure you'll find it just as enlightening as if I myself were teaching the class. Now, before we begin, does anyone have any questions?"

A hand was raised. "Yes?"

"I was just wondering," the boy began nervously, "why would the British Police need information on the psychological effects of torture and the mental profiles of rapists? Is there some new kind of Jack the Ripper type guy we should all be worried about?"

Harry almost smiled despite himself. He admired in Muggle culture how far back they had to reach to find an antagonist. Had any wizard asked that question, Voldemort would have been immediately brought into the conversation, but not with Muggle students. They found safety and comfort in the past, knowing somehow that true evil no longer existed in their world.

"I'm sure Mr. Potter could answer that question far better than I," the instructor granted. "Mr. Potter?"

"Nothing to worry about, really," he said lightly, noting the sighs that went around the room at his accent, "there's no one that twisted left around our part of the world. This is more for help training in the event that we ever need this sort of knowledge than anything else." He didn't like lying to them, but he would have liked telling them the truth even more.

"There you have it," the teacher said. "Have no fear. Now, the first up is," he consulted a sheet of paper, "Mr. Andrews with acquaintance rape."

Harry managed to sit and listen all the way up through a Mrs. Carlisle presenting ancient Germanic methods of torture before he gave up taking notes. Considering they were going in alphabetical order, this was not the greatest feat. So far on his clipboard he had managed to write down about four words and had drawn a rather remarkable likeness of absolutely nothing. He surreptitiously cast a wandless recording spell and sank down in his seat, telling himself that he'd go over all of it later.

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It was two in the morning and Harry still had not finished writing down all that he needed to. Hermione knew some tricky little spell that converted everything that the caster heard into writing, but for the life of him he couldn't remember how it was done. Furthermore, he wouldn't have trusted himself to perform any sort of magic when he was operating under this much stress and on this little sleep. Only the magic needed to activate the recorder and then he drew the line.

He'd been scribbling notes for over an hour, cursing his laziness earlier in the day all the while before he felt himself begin to nod off over the pages. Shutting off the recorder with a curse he began to flip through what he had accomplished thus far. He'd covered acquaintance rape, random rape, gradual procession, sadistic rape, and sadomasochism in real life, as well as forms of torture including pitchcapping, water boarding, disfigurement, and choking. Those were the words he had transcribed, though if you asked him what they meant, he wouldn't have the slightest idea of where to even begin.

Harry let out a tired sigh. If he hadn't have already lived through part of the war to end all wars, this alone would have been enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Though he had learned to tolerate the sleeping nightmares far more than the waking ones, he would prefer to have neither at all. Pure sleep. That was one luxury he hadn't been allowed since he was seventeen. And that was three years ago. Only three years. Harry rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. It seemed like so much longer ago that he was just another care free teenager, looking forward to graduation like all the rest, not having a care in the world besides who to take the closing ball and what his final scores would be. But he'd given up on reminiscing about the past. It only made the present all that much more difficult to deal with. And it was hard enough as it was without the extra help of pleasantly painful memories.

Tossing the files near the end of his small bed, Harry resolved to get at least a few hours sleep before going back to face the world. Even if it was only three or four, it would be more than he'd gotten in the past few weeks.

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There was a man.

Harry was walking slowly down a dark avenue of tress, the silence pressing in around him. It was almost as though he were suspended underwater for the light had that characteristic clouded look, the type where one tries to push the mental cobwebs aside, but finds that they can't. For in reality – as tarnished as it may be – there is nothing in front of them but their own hand, striving to get rid of nothing. But more importantly there was a man.

He was at one end of the lane while Harry seemed to be mired at the other. Though he tried to move his feet, he found that it was next to impossible for he had seemed to have grown roots that were hidden to his sight. He tried to struggle, but soon gave up, knowing that it was of no use. Looming behind the stranger was a house. In another lifetime it would have been in the height of fashion, a marvel of modern architecture with stately columns and a sweeping porch, but now it was only a relic of times long past. Vines were creeping up every surface as though to strangle the soul of the building while there seemed to be an ever present carpet of mist barely holding it onto the earth. The lawn was sprawled about the house, stretching on for what seemed like miles on all sides, but it was the farthest from kept. The whole thing looked as though it was completely deserted and about to fall down into itself as derelict things are so very wont to do.

The man was unmistakably beautiful yet there was a certain masked wildness in his eyes that Harry couldn't quite feel at ease with. He'd seen eyes like this before, but never had they been set within the confines of a human face. Whilst doing reconnaissance work for the Order, he'd been sent out into the western mountains to spy on colonies of lycanthropes. Horrible creatures, they were, the ones that had been totally turned to the side of the dark. Voldemort had so corrupted their minds that there wasn't even the slightest semblance of humanity left. When the moon wasn't at its fullest potential, however, the poor beasts could almost pass for normal people. Almost, save for their eyes. Those would forever be locked in an internal struggle between the shadows their lord had implanted and the lost souls struggling for freedom. Those were the eyes of the man before him. They were lost, but it was as though they had given up and no longer had any hope of being found.

The longer Harry stared, the more he found himself sinking into the gaze. His thoughts were conflicted, he wanted to move closer but something deep within him was telling him to run, run faster and farther then he ever had before. But he couldn't. His feet still wouldn't carry him. They simply would not tear away from the earth. The confusion that he'd felt originally was beginning to spiral down into something closer to fear now, which was strange for him. The Boy Who Lived was not one to feel something so inconsequential and meaningless as fear. It was an emotion that got one nowhere. His thoughts were distracted by the man at the opposite end of the lane pulling something from his coat pocket, his hand dipping gracefully in and out.

Harry felt an icy numbness spreading up his legs and reached down to try to yank them bodily from the ground which just would not let them go. He struggled vainly for a few more moments before giving up. Raising his head, he let out a gasp, for mere inches from his face were a pair of eyes eerily similar in color to his own. He stared transfixed into the near reflection, feeling something slip into his own pocket, but he was unable to tear his eyes from the ones looking back.

"Welcome home, Harry," the man said lovingly, his voice almost too soft to make out. The numbness in Harry's legs instantly turned into fire, filling his body with an unbearable heat.

"Harry, are you all right?" a pounding on the door made Harry's eyes snap open, frantically trying to adjust to the darkness that surrounded him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he called back, pushing the tremor from his voice, "just another nightmare is all."

"All right," came Hermione's worried tone through the wood, "try to go back to sleep, ok?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, more to himself than to her as he looked around his room in the Black Mansion in shock.

"I'm worried about him, Ron," Hermione said outside the door. "Did you hear how easily he said "another nightmare" instead of just "a nightmare"? That can't be a good sign."

"Come on, Hermione," Ron said confidently, "it's a war, everyone has nightmares. I'm sure Harry's fine, he's just tired is all. Besides, after today's meeting, I just might have nightmares myself."

"I suppose you're right."

Harry waited until he had heard them walk away before sitting up to survey the extent of the damage. It was a nice enough sentiment, that they cared about his wellbeing, but they were more worried about themselves. What ever would they do without their Savior?

The room looked as though it had been ripped apart by some sort of magical maelstrom. Clothes had been torn from his duffel by the foot of the bed and cast across the room, paintings were lying separate from their frames, and all the notes he had written down from the American class and compiled on the possible mental states of the man he was to track were strewn on the floor, blanketing the room in profiles of rapists and sadists.

Untangling his legs from the sheets that were holding them twisted to the bed, Harry ran a hand through his damp hair, trying to push away the last vestiges of his dream. He had fallen asleep with his clothes on again. Harry wearily pulled off his shirt, sighing as the cool air hit his fevered skin. The blankets were all but mired to him by his sweat, a feeling that he would have himself rid of. Undoing the button of his jeans, Harry's hand collided with something that he would have much rather avoided getting stuck in. With a sharp curse he cast a cleaning spell on himself, his wand appearing in his hand almost as quickly as if Voldemort himself had been in the room. Harry was more than a bit disgusted at himself, nothing about the dream had been stimulating in the least, quite the opposite really, but apparently it hadn't taken much. That was another setback of war. Zero companionship. Sure, there were friends and whatnot, but most people didn't live long enough to be anything more than a quick lay so there wasn't much of a point of it in the first place. Not that anyone would sleep with the Boy Who Lived. Either they were in awe of him or they saw him as just another kid thrown into something that was too much for them to handle. Neither of which made good pick-up lines in clubs or bars. Again, not that there were any left.

Sliding his jeans off the rest of the way, he felt something solid bump into his hand. He turned the item of clothing upside down and was confused to see a matchbook slide from one of the pockets. He picked it up curiously, noting that there was only one match left. Instantly he was reminded of his dream, the man slipping something from his own pocket into Harry's. The young man's eyes widened in understanding and he turned the cardboard over.

The Counting House. 67 Reform Road, Dundee, Tayside.

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