A/N: Yo. Don't have much to say just...KCWROX, here you go! *ties up Fang and Harry and teleports them to her* Have fun! And DarkNeko400, that's it, STOP ASKING ME WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! Really, can you at least let me know if the chapter is good, what can be improved, construcive critism, etc? And I happen to know that a friend of mine PMed you to STOP! (w/o my knowledge at the time, actually didn't even know she was on this site...and she didn't know this was my story, funny huh?) PLEASE! STOP IT! And I wouldn't be telling you this over the A/N except you disabled your PM. So, just stop...

DISCLAIMER: OWN NOTHING!

Chapter Ad: Susan Bones and The Prisoner of Azkaban by joemjackson.

Summary: What if Harry Potter was sent to Azkaban for killing Cedric Diggory? What if a Hufflepuff questioned his conviction?

MY COMMENTS: Really good, especially if you like Harry/Susan.

Chapter Six: Reunion

I stare out the plane window, my eyes trained on the clouds. I can hear Max shifting in the seat next to me, unsure of what to do or say. Everyone's been walking on pins and needles around me since yesterday. I guess I've been kinda...out of it. Numb, not speaking to anyone, in constant turmoil. My life was shattered once when I learned I had wings. Again when the experiments started. And now, the worst, most shattering of them all. I'm dying. And I know the exact date of my death.

June tenth...

Not enough time. Not enough to experience life. I'm not even going to make it to my sixteenth birthday. Heck, I'm not even going to make it to the end of fifth year! I wonder, morbidly, if I'll slowly get sicker and sicker, or if it'll be a sudden demise. I remember what I had been like yesterday...

I stayed in the forest all last night, crying, shaking, never sleeping. This morning I went back to the house so we could catch our early flight. I want to spend my last few months with my friends, even if I'll never need the information we'll learn this year. I don't want to die alone. Dr. Martinez took one look at me before bursting into tears and fleeing the room. None of the Flock had known what to say. Even Nudge was silent.

I said nothing, just walked out to the car. After calming down, Dr. Martinez drove us to the airport.

She never looked at me. Not once. When she said farewell to us, she had hesitated before hugging me.

"Harry..."

"Goodbye," I said sadly. We both had known that this was the last time she'd see me alive.

"Goodbye," she whispered, as we headed to our flight.

"Anything I can get you?"

I'm jerked back into the present by the voice of a flight attendent.

"Coke please," Max says.

"Just water for me, thanks," I respond, then murmur my thanks as she hands me a bottle. I twist the cap off and take a sip, resuming my staring out the window.

I breifly wonder what my friends will say when we meet again. I wonder if they will figure out our secret before my death. Max and the others will have to tell them after, how else would they explain away the fact that their friend just suddenly dropped dead?

We have a cover story up until...that point. We will claim to have been captured by Death Eaters, and that the Flock-minus-me were on the run from their former captors their whole lives. It's the truth. Kinda. And my friends will assume that we were tortured, so that can be used to explain away the scars and markings...

I rest my head on the window and sigh. Who am I kidding?

Our plan is simple: go to Diagon Alley, get our stuff, and then Floo to the Burrow from there. It should take Ron and Hermione about, oh...two seconds, to figure out that something was wrong with me.

"We are arriving in London. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened." I watch as we get closer and closer to the ground. Showtime.

Hermione

I sit at a table in The Leaky Cauldron, holding a butterbear and lost in thought. We were going back to Hogwarts in two days. Without Harry. My best friend. I can't even imagine what he's going through right now. Torture? Or is he dead?

Ron takes my hand and smiles at me. I can feel a faint jolt of electricity pass through our fingers. I've always sort of fancied Ron, though he was an insensitive git at times. But other times, like now, he always seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. And he always made me feel better when it truly mattered.

He said nothing, just holding my hand.

"So...you're saying that all we have to do is wave around random sticks and see which one shoots out sparks?"

I hear a girl's voice, sarcastically incredulous, but also with that definite 'try-and-lighten-the-atmosphere-with-a-joke' tone of voice.

"Mmmm..." Whoever she was trying to cheer up clearly wasn't...cheering up.

I hear the people who were talking come over and sit at the table next to us.

"I still can't believe magic actually exists!" Okay, that person's hyper.

"Sooo...what stores are we going to?"

"Er...Flourish and Blotts, Ollivander's, the Aphrocey, Eeylop's if you want an owl, Madame Malkin's, The Quill and Parchment Shop, then back here so we can Floo to the Burrow..."

I sit bolt upright. The Burrow?

I exchange a glance with Ron, then turn my attention to the strangers. There are seven of them. The one who was explaining the shops had black hair, green eyes, and looked distinctly familiar.

"Harry!" I gasp. He stops talking and his eyes snap on to mine.

"Hermione? Ron?"

"It is you!" I yell, and run over to him, closely followed by Ron.

I pull him into a hug, noticing faintly that he stiffens slightly.

"Where have you been? We've been looking everywhere for you, oh Harry!"

"Me and my friends, we were kidnapped by Death Eaters..." It is then that I notice the empty, haunted look in his eyes. He's also ditched the glasses, but I don't really care about that at the moment. His expression reminds me of photographs I've seen of war victims, aged by torment.

Torture...

"Oh God, Harry, I'm so sorry."

He smiles sadly. "It's... it's fine, Hermione."

"Harry..."

"Ron really, I don't want to talk about it. It's in the past."

"Sirius...he's been...off since you disappeared. Very quiet, depressed. Not speaking to anyone. Listless. He was working night and day to find you Harry, I don't think I've ever seen one person drink so much coffee..."

"Where is Sirius?"

"Well...all of the Weasleys came to Diagon Alley today, to get our school supplies. We needed an inconspicuous guard and-" I trail off, not wanting to say anything in front of Harry's new friends.

"It's alright Hermione, they know. All of it. I practically told them my life story, it was the only thing that kept me from going insane."

Insane. The torture was that bad? Harry could have lost his mind?

The very thought repulses me. The idea that someone could do that to a child, especially when said child happens to be my best friend, makes me livid.

"Well...okay," Ron's voice jolts me out of my thoughts. He clearly was thinking along the same lines I was, as a ghost of anger lingers on his features. "So, as Hermione was saying, we needed an inconspicuous guard and Snuffles did the trick."

"If you're being guarded," begins one of Harry's fellow captives, the oldest girl, "then why are you by yourself?"

Ron fidgeted nervously. "We...um...sorta gave them the slip."

She grins. "Nice. Well, why don't we go find them so we can have a big, happy family reunion, shall we?"

She leads the way. "Oh...Ig..." she adds as an afterthought, turning to a tall, pale boy "Lots of people, you may wanna stick close or hold on to one of us." It's then that I notice that the boy...Ig she called him?...had unfocused, cloudy eyes.

Blind.

"Did the Death Eaters do this to you?" I demand, stepping closer.

"Yes," he says, as if daring me to call him weak.

"The reunion will have to be put on hold," I say, grabbing his arm. "You follow me."

I lead him through the streets, furious that someone would do this. Fortunatley, blindness is very easily cured, in most cases. There are a few weird things that can cause it to be permanent, hopefully that didn't happen to Ig.

I lead Ig to the Potion Shop, vaguely noticing that the others have followed me curiously. I step up to the counter and ask for a sight-restoration potion.

"Unusual request, but I think we may have one left..." The lady digs around in the back room for awhile, and I turn to see Ig with a ghost of hope on his face.

"Here. That'll be 10 Galleons," she says, holding out her hand for the money. I wince, it's rather expensive but...it's worth it.

I hand over the money then turn and give the potion to Ig.

"Drink."

He eagerly grabs it and drains it in one gulp. He blinks a few times in confusion, then his eyes slowly start to focus. Slowly he pivots, looking around the shop in amazement, then he turns to me and the lady at the counter.

"I...I...THANK YOU!"

"No problem," I say, and the lady at the counter just smiles. "Now I believe we had a reunion to get to."

Sirius

The Weasleys are frantically looking for their youngest son, along with Hermione, and I am helping the best I can. It would be awful if they went missing especially so soon after...

Don't think about that. I told myself sternly. Harry. Is. Alive!

Yeah, and if he was alive do you really think the Death Eaters would just leave him alone? Dead...or being tortured. Which one do you think is worse?

Shut up!

Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity.

I sigh, resigned to the fact that I'll always be crazy, and continue the search.

"Mum! MUM!"

Oh...there's Ron. So he wasn't kidnapped after all. Good. Less work to do.

"Mum, Dad, everyone, you'll never believe who I just found in The Leaky Cauldron!"

"Why were you and Hermione in The Leaky Cauldron when we were supposed to stick together? We were worried sick!" Wow, who knew Molly Weasley could impersonate a banshee so well?

"Yell at me later, okay Mum? Please? This is really important!"

"I'll yell at you when I want-"

"Molly." Arthur cuts her off. "Maybe we should listen. It does sound important."

She glares at him for a moment before deflating. "Fine. But this better be good!"

"Oh it is-"

"Can I come out now?" The voice that cuts Ron's off sounds exasperated. It also sounds very familiar...

It can't be...

"Waaay to ruin the surprise, Harry," says Ron, looking happily annoyed. "Fine, you can come out."

"Thank you!" says 'Harry' and he shoulders his way through the small crowd that I am only now just noticing gathered behind Ron.

I stare at 'Harry.' I would have thought he was an imposter, heck, I had thought he was an imposter when I only heard his voice! But his eyes...oh God, his eyes, they look like mine did when I escaped Azkaban. Haunted, jaded. No child's eyes should ever look like that. And I know that it's a mark of whatever torture his kidnappers had put him through. I'm furious. I want to rip whoever did this into tiny shreds, tear them limb from limb.

"Oh, Harry," says Molly, drawing the boy into a hug. He stiffens, and it breaks my heart that he would be so tense over just a hug. He pulls back after a moment, bends down to scratch me on the ears.

"Missed you, Snuffles," he murmurs. And then the last doubts of it being Harry are wiped from my head.

As we set off down the alleyway shopping, Harry and the children I learn are his fellow captives explaining everything, a sense of loss overcomes me.

Oh Harry, what have they done to you?

A/N: There will be a heart-to-heart between Harry and Sirius, don't worry! Several in fact, and there will be a large amount of angst and tears for those of you into that kinda thing!

Also...I made a better trailer for this...can be found at http:/www. youtube. com/watch?v=wt-WpX6WsSY (w/o spaces)

Figured out how to mute the clips...trailer also fits the fic better. I also fixed the audio on my old trailer and put in a different song...fixed version can be found at http:/www. youtube. com/watch?v=NF0rFqxU0uY (again w/o spaces)

Finally, I figured out a way better summary for this fic, so...yeah...

So, adios! Au revoir! Until next time!

-Winged Quill