I don't own Harry Potter or any affiliated concepts or characters.

This story takes place in an AU where Voldemort is permanently and irreversibly killed in Godric's Hollow during the attack on the Potter's. Whether he had no Horcrux's, or they didn't work against Lily's blood magic, or something else is up to the reader- the point is he's gone. Naturally this causes all sorts of changes, which I've tried to naturally tell in the narrative. However to avoid any confusion:

No scarcrux, no curse on the DADA position, Harry's first two years are mostly uneventful compared to the original timeline since no Quirrelmort and no Diary, and have been skipped, the narrative beginning at the start of third year. Dumbledore retires at the end of Harry's first year leaving McGonagall to become Headmistress.


I don't own Harry Potter or any affiliated concepts or characters.

Sirius ran.

The fishing town he'd swam to was far behind him, and now he was racing alongside a river, heading south-west and still in his Animagus form. The former prisoner wasn't even sure where he was going, exactly, only that he needed to get there before the guards at Azkaban found his cell empty and raised the alarm. Options rose up in his mind, each quickly discarded.

The night bus was too risky. He could steal a wand and try to apparate, but in his condition he wasn't even sure if he'd be able to cast it. Lupin? No. His old friend would probably kill him before he could even try and explain.

Sirius wouldn't blame him. He'd done himself no favours by behaving like a madman when he was arrested, and he doubted he would be able explain himself much better this time around. Fine, then. Straight to the source it was.

Hogwarts.

Four words rose up to dominate his ragged mind, replacing everything else.

Find Pettigrew. Kill Pettigrew. Find Pettigrew. Kill Pettigrew. Find Pettigrew. Kill Pettigrew.

Everything else came after that one goal. Once the Rat was dead, then he could work out what else to do. Maybe he would just give himself back to the Ministry. It was what he deserved, of that much he was certain, but he would rather they imprisoned him for something he'd actually done. The only reason to stay free after taking out Pettigrew was Harry, but... the boy would likely be better off without him.

James certainly would have been.

Trying to shake off the ever-present guilt, Sirius stopped for a moment. Dwelling on the past wouldn't help him get Wormtail, and it certainly wouldn't-

Something felt wrong.

Even rusty as they were, his animal instincts were suddenly screaming at him, telling him to turn and run, or prepare for a fight.

Before Sirius had a chance, a flash of silver entered his peripheral vision and he was frozen in place, mid step, unable to move a muscle and cursing the damage Azkaban had done to his reflexes. In the old days he would have twisted out of the way with ease.

"Forma Verto," a voice incanted from somewhere in the darkness, and with a flash of blue light Sirius was hurled back into his human body, naked and shivering.

A figure emerged seemingly out of nowhere in front of Sirius. Male, perhaps older than Sirius, with a thick moustache and an air of absolute calm that translated even in the dim moonlight. He was smiling.

"Pleased to meet you at long last, Mr. Black. We were getting worried."

The man paused and Sirius realized his mouth was free to move despite the paralysis. That was something, at least.

"Who the fuck are you," he growled through clenched teeth. It was readily apparent the stranger wasn't with the Ministry. They wouldn't have bothered with a body-bind, or with the pleasantries.

The man stepped forward and wordlessly lit up his wand.

"That doesn't concern you right now. What concerns you is the squad of Aurors that are searching for you as of-" he pulled a pocket-watch out of his coat and checked it, "-an hour ago."

They'd been faster on his trail than he'd thought.

"They have express orders to use lethal force if you resist. Or, if you surrender. Or if they find you passed out and completely defenceless. Between you and me, the minister is not particularly concerned with your well-being, and nor will the public when they find out you escaped. I am your one and only hope of salvation now. I hope you realize how staggeringly lucky you are."

Sirius worked up just enough energy to spit at the man's feet.

"Piss off old man, I wasn't born yesterday. I can handle the Aurors and I'm not going to be tricked into owing a life debt to you, whoever you are," he said.

"You can't handle them if I leave you trapped here," the man countered, seemingly unperturbed by Sirius' hostility, "but when it comes down to it, I have always preferred the carrot to the stick."

With that, the stranger withdrew a photo from within another coat pocket and placed it in front of Sirius. Paralysed, Sirius' only expression of the shock he felt was by violently cursing.

The photo was of Peter Pettigrew, older than Sirius had ever seen him, shaking hands with someone with their back to the camera.

The stranger spoke up, clearly taking Sirius' stunned silence as an invitation, "This photo was taken shortly after Mr. Pettigrew agreed to a similar proposal I am about to offer you. It is also a one-way Portkey which will take you to a safe house. We will have time to discuss this better tomorrow when you are rested, so I will put it simply: if you want any chance at all of revenge, or of staying out of the ministry's hands, then take the Portkey. Otherwise I will leave you to your own devices."

With that, the man released Sirius from paralysis and in the same movement apparated away. For a few long moments Sirius just stared at the photo, features twisted in anger, before he reached out and grabbed it. With a lurch, the world fell away.


Harry tried and failed to contain his excitement. Two long months at the Dursley's had been so unbearable that he wondered how he'd managed to survive it for so long. At first, he had been happy that the Dursleys were more-or-less ignoring him, but it hadn't taken long for boredom to set in. After two years of Hogwarts, Surrey had become painfully dull. Even more than that, Harry missed his classmates in Hufflepuff.

King's Cross was bustling with Muggles and magic-users alike, and Harry was glad his family had left so quickly after dropping him off. He was sure they would not have approved of some of the more obvious wizards attempts to blend in with the muggle population. Grinning at one man in purple star-covered robes and a ludicrously tall top hat, Harry wondered how wizarding society had managed to stay hidden for so long. Certainly not through caution on the part of wizard-kind. Then again, who could possibly care what muggles thought of you when you had magic.

The cool sensation of the hidden passageway passed over him as he entered the less crowded, but more chaotic, platform 9 ¾. He immediately started craning his neck to look for anyone he recognized. Wishing he was taller, the 13-year-old hurried over to the nearest entrance to the Hogwarts Express. He was almost late.

"Thanks, Dudley," he said to himself.

After some effort Harry boarded the train and started moving down the corridor, greeting the few familiar faces he saw.

"Harry!"

The voice originated from a grinning face poking out of carriage, and Harry yelled back a greeting in turn.

"Ernie!"

"Good to see you again Harry, me and Justin-"

"-Justin and I-"

"-Shut up, me and Justin were getting worried that Black might have got to you already."

Harry, used to the two bickering, ignored Justin's interruption, and sat heavily next to the other occupant of the carriage, Ernie Macmillan.

"Where's Hannah and Susan?"

Ernie shrugged, "Off giggling with the other girls I imagine, you know how they are, no house loyalty at all."

Justin leaned forward eagerly. The boy was seemingly barely stopping himself from jumping out of his seat. Justin normally prided himself on his composure- a consequence of having been brought up in a strict upper-class household. He had never actually told them how wealthy his family was, but given the way he threw Galleons around Harry could guess.

"Harry, old chap, Ernie was just telling me all about that Black fellow and his escape from Azkaban- I'm sure you know how bloody hard it is getting information while cooped up away from Hogwarts. Seems like a right piece of work from what Ern' was saying."

Harry nodded wearily. He'd had such a flood of letters telling him about Sirius Black that at this point Harry felt like he knew the madman personally. One particular uncomfortable message had detailed the reason that the Death Eater was caught, and his personal relation to Harry. He was glad he'd found that particular information while at the Dursley's- he'd had plenty of time to vent his anger somewhere he didn't have access to magic and couldn't do something stupid.

"-worried you might do something stupid like going after him if he showed up at Hogwarts. You still listening?"

Harry tuned back into the conversation, and rolled his eyes. "Even I'm not dumb enough to go after a Death Eater. Even Ernie isn't dumb enough to go after a Death Eater."

Ernie didn't even pretend to be offended. "He'd have to be mad to show up here anyway, what with the new guards the ministry brought in," he said with the obnoxiously smug aura of someone who knew a secret and wasn't going to share it in a hurry.

Refusing to rise to the bait, Harry just stared at him, waiting to see whose willpower would crumble first. Predictably, it was Justin's.

"What new guards?"

Ernie sat back, smearing the biggest shit-eating grin possible across his face.

"Can't say I'm afraid, it's all a bit hush-hush, really a big secret," he said.

"Dammit Justin, he would have told us eventually if we just didn't ask."

Having to be content for the moment with waiting, and refusing to give him the satisfaction of asking again, Harry instead suggested a game of exploding snap as the train took off. The boys quickly fell into an easy camaraderie, swapping stories of their holidays, not that Harry had much to share.

Ernie, the most natural storyteller of the three, was regaling them with a tale about how some distant cousin had set fire to their families furniture when the first set of cards detonated, covering Harry in soot.

Like clockwork, the door to their carriage opened and Draco Malfoy entered, as always refusing to knock, flanked as ever by Crabbe and Goyle. Harry had never actually bothered to learn their first names. The blonde pureblood didn't even bother commenting on Harry's misfortune except to raise an eyebrow before turning to Ernie and Justin.

"Still hanging out with this lot, Potter? Thought you might have found some better friends over the holidays- oh, my mistake, I forgot you have to live with Muggles."

"Piss off Malfoy," Harry replied easily. "Unless you wanna fight right here on the train? "

Despite what the rest of the school might have thought, their fabled midnight battle in first year hadn't been anything to write home about. Without either of them actually knowing how to cast a shield charm or counterspell, let alone any particularly useful combat magic, it had mostly consisted of insults, poorly aimed hexes, and a lot of running in circles.

Since then the two had enjoyed a sometimes friendly- and frequently very unfriendly- rivalry that included occasional rematches of their first duel.

Draco smirked. "I'll save my tricks for the Club, Potter. I hope you're ready, I doubt anyone else in your pathetic house will be any real challenge."

"I'll take that as a complement."

"I wouldn't. Think of yourself as being the king of a very unimportant town, full of peasants and dirty pigeons."

This insult to Hufflepuff was more than Ernie could take and he stood up, drawing his wand.

"It's three on three Malfoy, maybe we should have a scrap, just to ring in the new year," he said.

Draco seemed to consider it for a minute before instead snickering and turning to leave, "Like I said Macmillan, I'll save it for an audience. We've all been waiting two years to join it, I'm sure even you can wait another week. You can be my warmup before I take on Potter, how about that?"

"I'll warm you up with an incendium to the face and see just how bloody good you are Mal-"

Something stopped Ernie mid-sentence as all the colour drained from his face. A second later the rest of the compartment's inhabitants realized why as chill swept across the train. A light, almost imperceptible frost began to spread up from the floor covering the seats they were sitting on.

The cold went deeper than just the temperature, as though it also made the mind, the soul of the students feel frozen down to the core. In a moment, the only colour left was grey, the only sound the whistling of wind through a long-abandoned building. It was like someone had draped a sodden blanket over every living thing on the train, leaving them damp and trapped in place beneath its weight.

Dementors.

Malfoy and his goons gave some very undignified shrieks and fled in the opposite direction, not that Harry could blame them. Had his legs been working properly he would likely have done the same. Seconds later, something dark and cloaked passed by their window, moving too hideously smoothly along the hallway to be anything alive.

Harry had read about Dementors last year with Ernie and they had both agreed after some debate that were they to come across one, they would be able to handle its effects easily. After all, it was just fear, right? Harry had thought himself brave enough to stand up to the thing, pictured himself as the sole person in a crowd of students not cowering against the terror of the dark creature.

In that moment Harry realized there was no such thing as bravery or pride in the face of a Dementor's chill. It wasn't that they made you sad- it was that they made you forget there anything but sadness.

A second later it moved passed their carriage and that dreadful feeling passed. With a gasp he suddenly remembered to breath, and the compartment was silent except for the occasional shout of alarm or scream as the hooded figure made its way quickly down the carriage. In a few minutes it had completed the rotation and the train could start up again, but its effects lingered in the minds of everyone for longer than that.

Justin broke the silence.

"Fuck!"

"C-couldn't have put it better myself," Ernie muttered, sitting down as the tension left his body. "Dementors."

Harry just nodded dumbly. For a moment, as the Dementor had passed, he could have sworn he heard a woman's voice crying out faintly. It had almost sounded like she was crying out his name.

Ernie swallowed hard and attempted to talk some life back into the carriage.

"Well lads, no need to let some bloody undead interrupt our game, right?"

"Technically Malfoy interrupted-

"-shut up and help me collect the cards you twat."

In a few moments the two were bickering again as Harry watched, the Dementors momentarily forgotten. Despite the terror he was almost glad- if he had spent thirteen years locked up with those creatures then he would want to avoid them at all costs. Black would have to be completely insane to come to Hogwarts now.