I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 3

Harry slowly drifted to consciousness. He suddenly realized that he was not in his bed in Slytherin house, and he jolted up to full alertness. Harry felt at his arm and grabbed his wand holster. It was still there, as were his two secondary holsters. Relaxing slightly, he realized that he was in the Hogwarts infirmary, near the end of it. There weren't any other people visible, but Harry didn't trust it. He quickly used a few silent spells to detect animagi and invisible people, and left a few quick wards to tell him if anyone entered the immediate area. It wasn't paranoid if they actually were out to get you.

The most important thing done, Harry tried to remember how he got into this situation. Oh, it was the dementors. He had killed them, then he had been thrown backwards and fell unconscious. Well, as long as he destroyed them, he would be fine. So long as he was one step closer to defeating Voldemort. He still didn't know what he would do after he won. He had been planning on entering the Veil like his dimension's version of Sirius had been thrown into, but what if his loved ones weren't there in the afterlife? It would be a sad thing, dying and having no one even in death.

Then Harry remembered the Tournament of Champions. He remembered Iris Potter being chosen by the Goblet of Fire, and his mood plummeted. One step forward, one step back. He should have been better, should have done something differently. He hadn't thought that Barty Crouch had put Iris' name in the cup so soon, a month and a half before the Choosing, but it was still his mistake, and his responsibility to fix. Now that he thought about it, didn't he get named as the Hogwarts Champion by the sorting hat just before he destroyed the dementors? That extended his responsibilities considerably, perhaps more even than preventing Iris Potter from dying in the Tournament.

Harry told himself to snap out of it and stop feeling so sorry for himself. Yes, things were bad. Yes, this Voldemort had all the knowledge of Harry's version of Voldemort. Yes, he had a big job to do. But the dementors were gone forever and he would never have to worry about them again. Now instead of having the problem of the dementors hanging over his head, he was able to remove them from the equation for good. Harry tried to think of some positives for Iris being put in the Tournament and for Harry being named Hogwarts Champion.

Well, there weren't many good things about Iris in the Tournament, but if he tried to think of some positives, he could see the upsides. There were risks every step of the way, but he would try to minimize those. He could try to kill or release the dragons just before the first task, for example. That would take a lot of work, but it could be done with enough time. If he released them he would need to figure out a way to make sure they didn't rampage around and cause havoc, so that was probably out. If he decided to kill them he would have to figure out a way to not get burned to a crisp trying, but he had time to figure something out. If he could manipulate events correctly, he could even stop Voldemort before he came back. How much would he be able to find out in whatever hole he was hiding in? There was even a chance Voldemort didn't know Harry was there. More planning would certainly need to be done, but he could win the war immediately, before it started. Even if he failed to stop Voldemort from performing the resurrection ritual, it wouldn't work for him, since Harry had destroyed the 'bones of the father' that he had used, not to mention that he had also destroyed the bones of anyone else related to Voldemort, just in case. He had left transfigured sticks in their places. Voldemort wouldn't even know the difference until he drowned in the giant cauldron he had Peter Pettigrew drop him in.

There were even upsides to being named Champion of Hogwarts. He would have more freedom to perform his jobs there, probably. He would likely get told more stuff, and would possibly even get a vote about things like the Tournament. Draco had been asking him if he could start training the Hogwarts students like he had done with Dumbledore's Army in year five, Harry could almost certainly do that now. Harry was still extremely hesitant to do things that would involve other people in his war, but Perenelle's words from several weeks ago had had a large effect on his thinking. She had seen him trying to do everything himself, and trying to keep people from fighting in the war that would decide their fates and the fate of the world. She had told him just how much that resembled Dumbledore's actions. In Harry's old world, he hadn't even known when Dumbledore died until some time after it happened. That was because the supposed wisest wizard in the world had kept Harry in the dark at the Dursley's, hidden from everything while everyone was fighting a war, all while telling him, over letters, how important he was because of the prophecy. That barely started to describe the problems Harry had with him. He still laid much of the blame for Voldemort's return on Dumbledore's shoulders. Harry didn't want to become him, but he still recoiled from the thought of involving others when it wasn't necessary. Harry spent a few minutes thinking about his problems, but was interrupted by Perenelle Flamel coming in to the room.

Perenelle Flamel walked into the infirmary to check up on Harry after a meeting with Dumbledore. She expected him to wake up soon, but she had been worried about how he would react to hearing that he had inadvertently set Voldemort up perfectly to break the rest of his death eaters out of Azkaban. Harry was a good person, truly concerned with making the world a better place, but he was also incredibly damaged in multiple ways. She and Nicholas hadn't spent much time with him, but they had seen enough. Harry's mind and soul were hurt and warped by his life experiences. First, he had been physically and emotionally abused at a very young age by his aunt and uncle, weakening his self esteem and making him have trust issues. Then, he had been manipulated and kept in the dark by his version of Dumbledore, giving him an aversion to authority figures and even more trust issues. He had been constantly attacked by Voldemort in his school years, making him less able to put his guard down and teaching him that he could only rely on himself and occasionally his friends. The brutal resistance he had fought in for six or seven years had left all of his friends and comrades dead. All of his issues had been made worse, and he hadn't ever gotten the competent help he had needed for his problems. Of course, he had gotten a massive dose of survivors guilt from being the only person he knew that had survived, and he got all the other bad effects of his decades of trauma as well.

Then there were his magical mental problems. Voldemort had made him a Horcrux, which had led to years of warped emotions. Harry had even said that Voldemort was temporarily able to make him see and feel things that made him get his godfather killed. All of that had made him and his soul unstable. Worse, he had needed to split and destroy part of it by the use of a Horcrux in order to destroy Voldemort's own Horcrux that had been inside him. That splitting of his soul had made him obsessed to an irrational extent to defeat Voldemort, no matter the personal cost.

The strangest thing about him, really, was that he wasn't in a worse state. If, when she died, she found those people who kept him sane for all those years, she would have to wholeheartedly thank them. Still, 'not as bad as he should've been' wasn't good, and now Perenelle had to deliver the news that Voldemort had gained all of his old death eaters back. He would think that it was all his fault. It mostly wasn't, but that was how he would see it. It would, as he would soon point out, have been better for Harry to warn an auror about what he was going to do in advance so that Azkaban could be reinforced, but how could he have known that it was necessary? Two waves of reinforcements had gotten there, the first not five minutes after the dementors left. The death eaters shouldn't even have known that the creatures were gone, and beyond that, they shouldn't have been able to assemble a force fast enough to break in. Beyond that, Harry might not have known how weak the Azkaban wards had become after the dementors left. Perenelle would have to handle this very carefully.

"You're finally awake! You were out two days, after what you did. And you are looking quite recovered." It was true, and it wasn't just physically. He looked calmer now than when she had last talked to him, more at peace. She would have to see if she could bring it back somehow after this conversation.

"I was wondering about that. I guess people have some questions for me. Say, has it gotten out that I'm the champion of Hogwarts by now?"

"Draco and Daphne mentioned something about the sorting hat shouting out to protect Hogwart's champion, but they didn't know more. It was a very confused auror team that picked up the hat and Godric's sword from where you destroyed the dementors. Nicholas and I know about the whole system of being a Hogwarts Champion, considering that we worked with one of the ones before this during the century after Hogwarts got founded. By the time the aurors got to the scene the hat had shut up, and no one except for possibly Dumbledore knows about it." Perenelle finished speaking, and was deliberating when to tell Harry about the breakout when he saw her expression and knew something bad had happened.

"What? What went wrong?"

"Do you know if or how Voldemort could have known that he was able to send his goons to break into Azkaban as soon as the dementors left?" Perenelle hoped that she was doing this right. Perenelle and Nicholas were immortal, courtesy of an accidental combination of extremely powerful magic, but their multi thousand year lifespans had still been mostly spent in seclusion, and talking wasn't her area of expertise.

"Voldemort broke into Azkaban because I killed the dementors?" Harry looked crush and deflated.

"No. Voldemort's followers broke into Azkaban after you destroyed them, but it was under extremely strange circumstances." She gave him the details, leaving nothing out, and laying out exactly why he shouldn't blame himself for Voldemort's misdeeds. He tried for a moment to complain, but Perenelle cut him off.

He looked frustrated for a moment, then said "Fine, fine, I consciously realize that as long as I fix the mistakes I made, I shouldn't worry about them more, but let's look at the implications of this for a second. First, Voldemort now has his army back. They might be easy to find - might - but it will probably be very difficult to take them out. Say, I stole all the wands from Azkaban's prisoners when I broke Regulus out on my first night back at Hogwarts, did I tell you?"

"No, where did you find them?"

"I found them where the warden had left them, in his office, in a locked box out in the open. A small unlocking charm was all that was necessary to break into it, and I just dropped them all in my trunk. Anyway, what I'm getting at is this. Have there been any attacks on wandmakers? Ollivander is the main one, and the most well versed in wandlore. He'll be the main target, but he also had several partners and employees, any one of whom could make all the wands Voldemort needs."

"I think that there was something about it in the Daily Herald yesterday, but it wasn't connected to Voldemort's plans. It merely said that one of Ollivander's apprentices is missing, presumed dead. With all the commotion here and at Azkaban there likely won't ever be a full investigation. There was nothing anywhere about the prisoner's wands being missing."

"So I got another innocent hurt, all because I didn't want to take two minutes for a wand that literally had a tag on it saying 'Regulus Black?'"

"No, Harry. You were performing a life or death mission and didn't know if or when you would be found, and you had no reason to believe that it would harm anyone for you to take the wands away from a large group of very bad people, a group so terrible that the British wizarding populace thinks that Azkaban is a better punishment than simply executing them or finding a humane way to hold them. Plus, you probably saved lives by keeping good wands out of the hands of murderers. Trust me, having a properly attuned wand is far deadlier than a wand that isn't attuned. Can you imagine the Lestranges, two minutes out of Azkaban and already slaughtering aurors again? Dozens of aurors were killed in the breakout, but how many more would have died if you hadn't done what you did? They apparated out as soon as the anti apparition wards were down, but what if they felt like they should stay and fight the aurors. The aurors would have taken out many of them, but could you imagine fighting Voldemort with the aurors gone from the start?"

"You're right Perenelle, but I'm more concerned now with how the death eaters found out the dementors were gone. That mistake is what started this all, but how did they react so fast? If the aurors were on the scene as quickly as you say, how did the death eaters find out about the dementors and get there nearly instantly, with all of them fully ready?"

"No one I've talked to has got a clue, Draco is on that, he's asking Lucius to come meet him in private so that they can talk without having the ministry search the mail. The prevailing theory, though, is that it was all an accident. People think that there must have been a secret death eater meeting and someone was watching Azkaban while you destroyed the dementors. Actually, that's just one theory. The rest think that you were working for Voldemort and that it was a set operation. Cornelius Fudge is one of the second group of believers."

"What is he trying to do against me?"

"He's listening to his moderate base and called you in for questioning under truth serum, no matter what Nicholas and I say. Will your resistance to potions work well enough to lie under veritaserum?" Harry had used enough potions in a short enough period of years during the war that he had developed an immunity to potions unless he added a drop of his blood to the potion shortly before ingestion. It didn't make the brew more powerful, but it made it more attuned to him. That also meant that the potion wouldn't work for other people as well as it did for him. Even Nicholas, despite his millennia of potions experience and mastery hadn't seen something like that much, but it wasn't unheard of.

"I haven't tried it, but going off of what other potions do to me, it would work on me, it would just work for a short time, and it would take most of my body's energy for the rest of the day. It would mitigate a lot of the damage, but if they happened to ask me my name during the trial, no scratch that, if they ask me anything, they find out about what I've been hiding. But let's figure this out later, how is everything else going?"

Now she would have to tell him that his cover might be blown. He would probably appreciate it if she was blunt. "When you destroyed the dementors, surely saving many lives in the process, you fell unconscious, partially from your fall, partially from the magical backlash of the dementor's energy when they died. The process of destroying them also left a large amount of their magical energy in you. I hadn't ever worked with patients hurt by dementors, but the aurors had more experience than anyone else dealing with them, and James Potter explained it like this. When a normal person is attacked by dementors, they usually eat chocolate, but even if they don't, they're fine in an hour or so, and it's only bad for a few minutes if you don't eat it. For you, the effects should have been magnified several hundred times. They were attacking you while you killed them, and instead of one of them, there were hundreds. It would have been like Azkaban, except that they were all much closer than they would be if you were imprisoned there, and they were all focused on you. He also thinks that their deaths might have left more of their effects on you."

"Don't worry, I feel fine Perenelle. I know what it's like to be near dementors, and I feel none of that right now."

"I know, but unfortunately, that's not what this explanation is about. See, when you were unconscious and being carried out by Sirius Black, James Potter, and Frank Longbottom, you started talking about how you had killed a number of people, and you mentioned a few by name. I have a list here, I looked at Draco Malfoy's memory and took notes." She looked at the paper from her pocket, still sitting in the chair she had pulled up beside him. "You mentioned your old friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, almost all of the Weasley family, actually. There was Cedric Diggory, the professor that Voldemort possessed in your first year, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Nymphadoria Tonks. You referred to all of them by the names that you normally call them, dementors didn't somehow make you refer to everyone you know by their full names or something stupid like that, but that still left you calling Sirius' niece by the name Tonks, and you referred to the deaths of a Sirius and a Remus, who Draco said was very close to you."

"That's not so bad, right? Sirius, Tonks and Remus are all fine and still alive, as are Hermione, Cedric and the Weasleys."

"Except you said that you killed Quirrel, and you are close to the son of an obvious death eater. Dumbledore kept the whole Quirrel business under wraps, and no one except for those directly involved know about the circumstances of his death. Plus, as James, Sirius and Frank found out later, your actions led to the Azkaban breakout. That's a lot of stuff pointing to you being involved with Voldemort."

Harry slumped down further into his bed, looking resigned. "Well, I guess that it would probably be best to just get it over with and tell the world who I am. I assume that what I said is one of the things that that moron Fudge will be questioning me about?"

"James, Sirius and Frank promised to keep it quiet for the moment, courtesy of Daphne thinking quickly. She got them to promise to talk to you before they went to anyone else. Sirius came to me yesterday and told me that they would like to talk to you before your trial, and that they might be able to get you out of it."

"When is my trial supposed to be?"

"Fudge wants it as soon as possible. Once it got out that the dementors had attacked the Gryffindor girl you saved before you attacked them, his approval ratings tanked. He's hoping that you will end up being complicit in the breakout, which would take the heat from him. How will you want to do the meeting with them?"

Harry thought for a few minutes, leaving Perenelle to marvel at how much calmer he was acting than he had previously. Maybe his sanity would make it through the coming war after all.

As for Harry, he was making a difficult decision. Would he try to use his family connections and a lot of lies to maybe continue without his identity being known, or would he reveal his true self to James and Sirius, and try to keep it from everyone else? He looked at where his rings were on his left hand. Ever since he had come of age, he had possessed the rings that declared him to be the head of House Potter and House Black. Currently, both of them were invisible on his hand, and the only visible ring that he had on was his Flamel ring, from when Nicholas and Perenelle made him their heir. The rings of the heads of houses were impossible to intentionally fake, and were unable to ever be removed. Anyone with a knowledge of the British magical houses would know what they declared about him, which was why Harry had made them invisible. If he revealed it to them, they would know that he was being honest when he said that he was from another dimension.

He had already considered the topic of revealing himself, multiple times, but now, he thought of the question differently than he had before. If he kept himself secret from everyone, assuming that he could, he would keep going down the path of a lone man facing Voldemort, leaving the world ignorant of all that he knew. But if he revealed himself to James and Sirius, he would start on the path of a general and a teacher. Even if he died later on in the war, he would still help humanity afterwards through his teaching and information. It was difficult for him to get them involved in what he still saw as his war, but at least he now saw that for the hypocrisy it was. He knew it was the right decision to tell them his secrets, but it still took him several tries to speak. When he did, however, his voice showed his determination. "Tell them that I'll talk to them, and tell them to bring veritaserum. I think it's time they learned the truth."

That's chapter three. This is only half of what I wanted to have in the chapter, but I was writing slower than normal, and the list of what I wanted to put in here just expanded as I considered it.

Also, I wasn't able to figure out how to separate these author's notes from my main text in either of the previous chapters, so if I still have that problem with this chapter, I would love for someone to tell me how to fix that.

Critique is welcomed as always.