Only Harry Shall Have Incredibly Timely Escapes
By: Tezza1502
Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. Honest and for true!
Notes: Stepping back in time a bit from last chapter, to see where it all started…
Oh, and No, I do not promote or encourage underage drinking, nor drug taking. (Because if I don't explicitly mention that, someone will climb up on their soapbox, and whinge about it. Without a doubt. Because some people are like that, no matter what common sense dictates…)
CHAPTER 1- It began with a dream…
Malfoy Manor. Just after the end of Harry's fifth year at Hogwarts.
The Death Eaters nervously shuffled around the main hall of the Malfoy manor. Voldemort had called every marked follower he had available to him two hours ago, and all he had done so far was stare at them silently, with a malevolent contempt.
A disturbance at the entrance to the large room caused the dark lord's eyes to flick in that direction.
"Ah. Severus. The old fool has finally seen fit to allow you to respond to my summons."
Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts, Potions master, and spy for both Dumbledore and Voldemort, carefully hid a grimace behind his Occlumency shields. His dark mark had started burning painfully a few hours ago, and had only stopped once he had passed the threshold of the Malfoy wards. "My Lord." He bowed deeply as he stood in front of one of his masters.
With a negligent wave of his wand hand, Voldemort dismissed him to his place within the ranks of his inner circle. He then stood and cast his gaze over all his servants.
Several of them shuddered behind their black robes and silver masks. The dark lord's glare held even more contempt than before, if it was possible.
"I have been reviewing the actions of my followers, these past few months." He started without preamble. "Since the failure of those who were supposed to be my most skilled followers at the Department of Mysteries, to wrest a prophecy from the hands of mere children," He snarled, looking directly at Bellatrix Lestrange, the only follower of his to actually escape from that fiasco, "I have been re-examining the general usefulness of you who have put yourselves in my service, trying to decide whether… changes… are in order, to boost your general level of competency."
Now, shuffling and subtle glances were exchanged amongst those death eaters who had survived in the dark lord's service for the decades before his defeat by Harry Potter. The last time the dark lord got it into his mind to start experimenting on his followers, it was with the idea of enhancing his minions mentally.
Crabbe and Goyle had been amongst his most cunning and inventive followers until that month in 1976. Now, they were so stupid, they had to pick each other's noses because they couldn't cross their eyes enough to be able to line up their fingers with their own nostrils. Whatever had been done to them had also been passed along do their children, if Lucius' reports from his son at Hogwarts were to be believed.
"Ah, I see some of you remember my efforts to improve the versatility of my followers during the seventies." He grinned forebodingly. "Good. Then you will understand something of what is to come."
With a lightning-fast lunge, Voldemort grabbed the nearest death eater and stabbed his wand at the unfortunate wight's dark mark…
4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging.
Harry woke up suddenly. Blinking, he gradually realised that he was not an insane mass-murderer who was about to genetically molest his marked followers while nursing wood. He was, in fact, a teenage boy, trapped at his relatives home while all of his friends got to actually enjoy their summer holidays.
And nursing wood.
"Please tell me that I did not get a hard on from watching Voldemort poke a random death eater with his wand." He giggled, paused, and grimaced. "And I have been stuck here alone for way too long, if I'm starting to find thoughts like that even remotely funny."
Putting his glasses on as he stood in the bare room his relatives grudgingly allowed him to occupy, Harry tried to remember what he had seen in Voldemort's mind through their shared link.
"Okay. Voldie's got all his minions with him in a room somewhere. And he's… going to experiment on them? Something about improving them to a point beyond being inbred purebloods?" He snorted as he wrote down his thoughts. "Yeah, good luck with that." Harry sniggered as he thought of the purebloods he knew personally that were in the dark lord's service. Almost to a man, they were somewhat… lacking… in the brains department. And while the women were generally smarter, more than a few of them were also somewhat quirky, in various ways.
The purebloods he knew that weren't death eaters were almost as odd.
Finishing his task, he rolled the parchment and went over to where his owl, Hedwig, was perched near the window. "You up for a flight, sweetie?" He asked blearily.
Hedwig barked what Harry took to be an affirmative.
"Right-o! Have a nice flight, and make sure you leave a dropping somewhere in his office that's hard to find." This was something Harry usually asked of his owl whenever he had a message for her to send to Dumbledore this summer. If the old fart was going to leave him in the shit every summer with his relatives, then Harry figured that a bit of turnabout was fair play.
Watching Hedwig fly into the night, and wishing that he was capable of doing the same, Harry finally sighed and climbed back into bed. Reaching under his bed, he felt along the inside of the bed frame until he found what he was looking for. A plastic zip-lock bag filled with what looked like hand-rolled cigarette's.
Withdrawing a thickly packed rolled up piece of paper, Harry lit one end of it with his lighter. Sucking in the sweet smoke, he smirked as he thought about the fact that Dudley really shouldn't get so stoned on a regular basis. Neither should he mumble out loud about the positions of his various stashes around number four, Privet Drive, when Harry was within earshot.
"He might be a fat prick with all the manners of a flobberworm, but he definitely knows where to score good quality weed." Harry exhaled and waved the joint in Dudley's general direction as a vague salute.
A few days later, early in the morning, Vernon Dursley opened his front door to find a motley collection of freaks on his doorstep. "What in the-" Was all he had time to shout before he was summarily bound with ropes and levitated back inside his own house.
Petunia barely had time to shriek as her husband floated backwards into the living room, followed by a half dozen wizards. She soon found herself in a similar predicament.
"Right! I'll mind these two idiots." Alastor 'Mad-eye' Moody stated as he stomped into the room, the claws on his false leg leaving great gashes in the carpet as he went. "Tonks! Lupin! Get Potter. Kingsley. Arthur. Diggle. Your with me. Watch the windows."
Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin headed up the stairs to Harry's room as the other four settled in downstairs.
"He's gonna be so surprised when we rock in there and tell him he's getting out of here early." Tonks chortled gleefully.
"Indeed." Lupin agreed. "I just wish we could have sent a note ahead to warn him we were coming."
"I know. But, Dumbledore said that the less people know about this, the safer it'll be. I mean, with all that weird stuff about what the death eaters can do now…" She shuddered. "Better safe than sorry, I think."
"True." Remus agreed softly as he knocked on Harry's door. "Harry? It's Remus Lupin. We're here to take you to Grimmauld Place a little early this year."
"Wha-" The sound of stumbling could be heard through the door, as well as the clink of a half-empty bottle being kicked across the floor. "Effing thing get outa the way…" Finally the door swung open. "What're you two doing here?" Harry slurred as he looked at them through bleary eyes.
"Hi Harry, we're here to-" Tonks' chirpy voice faded into silence as she took in the sight and scent of The-Boy-Who-Lived. "…are you drunk?"
"Maybe?" Harry glared at her through the pain of his hangover. "What? You don't think I suffer through my summers with these people sober, do you?" He slurred.
"…how long have you been doing this?" Remus asked, utterly shocked at what he was seeing and hearing.
"Since I came back after my second year, I think." He muttered, scratching his chin in thought. "I usually have a few days notice before you lot spring me, so I can sober up in peace."
"Where do you get the booze from?"
"Nick it off my dear uncle Vernon."
"And he doesn't notice the level of his bottle going down?"
"Nah. I take note of how much of his scotch I drink, then pee in the bottle until it's back to its normal level."
Both Tonks and Remus went a little green at hearing that.
"What? I've been taking shit from him for years! 'Bout time he took the piss from me for a bit." Harry snorted. "Besides his palate's about as sophisticated as Ron's. I doubt he'd ever notice if no-one told him."
Shaking himself out of his growing nausea, Remus resumed explaining why they were there. "We need to get you packed and ready to leave, Harry. Dumbledore has decided that it isn't safe for you here anymore."
"Why?" Harry interrupted.
Tonks sighed. "We'll explain later, kiddo. Right now, we gotta leg it back to HQ."
"Again, why?" Harry repeated in growing annoyance. "I've been begging that old wanker for years to get me out of here permanently, and now he decides all of a sudden to parole me early?" He narrowed his eyes at the both of them. "What's changed?"
Remus sighed. "Nothing you need to worry about, Harry. Now, go on and pack, so we can get going."
Harry shrugged and scratched himself inappropriately. "Well, if there's nothing to worry about, then I'm going back to bed. Come back in a week." He yawned and started to shut the door on their faces.
"We don't have time for this." Tonks shoved the door open and reached for Harry impatiently, only to pull up short when he shoved the lit tip of his wand that he'd had hidden behind the door between her eyes.
"Tonks," Harry glared at her through bloodshot eyes, "I have just had a truly bad year at Hogwarts, which ended with the death of my godfather. I have been drinking rather heavily to blot out that fact, the last couple of weeks. As such, I am extremely hung over this morning, and am in a bad mood as a result. Then you lot show up, bang on my door loud enough to wake the neighbours three streets over, demanding that I follow you back to another of Dumbledore's prisons with no warning and less explanation. I also thoroughly dislike being manhandled, by anyone." He punctuated that fact with a growl. "Which means that you are in a very bad place right now, Tonks. Now, one of you start explaining, or I start casting."
Remus, upon seeing the look in Harry's eyes, found himself stuck in a flashback to one of the times he had witnessed Sirius Black trying to wake a very drunk Lily Evans, and the carnage that had ensued. So, Tonks was on her own. She gulped, and started blabbering everything she knew.
"Dumbledore received intelligence from a secret source earlier this week that You-Know-Who had done something to his Death Eaters. We did a bit of digging, and found that he has altered them somehow. Wards don't stop them. Lethal spells don't seem to work anymore. Their ferocity has been amplified a huge amount. And…they seem to be…infecting…anyone they come into contact with, somehow. The one's they leave alive, that is. We don't know how, but they are able to pass on whatever You-Know-Who has done to them."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "And…"
"And, since they can no longer be stopped by wards, Dumbledore wants you moved to another location. He doesn't want to take the chance of a death eater at the ministry bribing someone for your address. Right now, they could literally waltz through the wards here, take you, and present you to the dark lord. So, you won't be coming back here. Ever." Tonks shrugged helplessly, her eyes still fixed on the wand pointed at her head. "That's it. That's all I know."
Harry grunted and lowered his wand. "There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?" With that, he turned and started packing his meagre amount of belongings into his school trunk.
Tonks exhaled explosively, and turned to her companion. "Fat lot of good you were!" She grumbled as she smacked a still-dazed Remus behind the head.
"Call off the biting nipples, Lily, I'll be good!" He screamed in terror. Blinking, he looked around. "Where's Harry?"
"Packing." Tonks replied sheepishly. "I, uh, kinda spilled everything Dumbledore told us while he had me at wand point."
"Tonks!" Remus shouted.
"What?" Tonks shouted back. "You were off in lolly-land, and I was staring down the length of a wand that has successfully fought You-Know-Who! What was I supposed to do?"
"Flash your tits at me?" Harry asked hopefully as he dragged his now packed trunk over to them.
The two Order members gaped at Harry.
"I guarantee you, they would have distracted me quite thoroughly."
"Maybe next time." Tonks mumbled as she got over her shock. "Y'know, I don't ever remember you being this cheeky."
"Give me time to sober up, an' I'll go back to being emo-Harry." He shrugged. "Now, how are you lot getting me to wherever we're going? 'Cause I doubt I'm up to flying at the moment."
"Alastor has a portkey downstairs." Remus supplied.
"Oh yay. Mad-eye's in the same room as my relatives. This aught to be a hoot." Harry shuddered as he made his way past Tonks and Remus towards the stairs.
The two adults watched him pass between them, before Tonks turned to Remus. "'Biting Nipples?'"
Remus blushed. "Lily was a mean and creative drunk when given cause. And she was even worse when she was hung over. The Marauder's endured that little personality quirk on more than one occasion." He shuddered. "Considering the glare he was giving us when you reached for him, I'd rather not find out the hard way that Harry could have inherited that trait, along with the colour of her eyes."
Harry dragged his trunk down the stairs to the living room, to find four wizards glaring at the Dursleys, who seemed to have aggravated at least one of them, because they were now stuck to the roof with ball-gags in their mouths. "Okay, what did I miss?"
"Harry! Wonderful to see you." Arthur Weasley came over, put his hands on Harry's shoulders, and gave him a thorough looking over. Being an experienced father, he didn't really like what he saw. "Are you hung over?"
"Extremely." Harry nodded. "Are we ready to go?"
"Harry?" Arthur spoke quietly again. "Why are you hung over?"
"Because I've spent the whole time since the end of school drunk and stoned, and I didn't get a message that you lot were showing up."
With the patience and fortitude that only comes from marrying a woman that thought she had Merlin's blessing to loudly inflict her opinion on everyone that came into her presence, and raising seven boisterous magical children, Arthur kept asking questions. "Why were you drinking and, er, 'stoning', in the first place?"
"Because I have a lot of things that I really want to avoid thinking about for as long as possible, and there's not much else to do here that won't get me thrown into Azkaban." Harry rolled his eyes. "Look, I've been told that your all in a rush to get me out of here. So lets get on with it, shall we?"
"Aye, lets get on with it." Mad-eye growled as he fished around in his pocket for the portkey, his magical eye never leaving the suspended Dursleys. Pulling out a length of rope, he held it out for everyone to grab on to.
"Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with them?" Harry pointed a thumb at his relatives, who were making the portion of the roof they were stuck to sag alarmingly.
"Tonks and I are going to stay behind, and try to explain the danger they are now in, and convince them to move somewhere else." Remus said as the two of them entered the room.
Harry looked incredulously from Remus, up to the Dursleys, and back. "You are so going to give me the memory of that conversation to watch later." He was about to take the rope, when he snapped his fingers and popped the lid of his trunk open. "Wait. I'm not coming back here, right? Ever!"
"No, laddie. It's not safe anymore." Moody answered. 'If it ever was.' He grunted internally.
"Excellent!" Harry drawled as he rummaged in his trunk. "Here we go." He exclaimed as he pulled a nearly full bottle of very expensive scotch out, and walked over to Vernon's alcohol cabinet in the corner of the room. "Nearly forgot to return this."
"Is that…?" Remus groaned, losing a bit of colour in his face.
"Ya-huh."
"When did you…?" Tonks asked, looking queasy.
"When you two were arguing upstairs while I emptied my room."
"Are you…?" Remus choked back a bit of bile at the thought of alcohol being violated the way Harry had done to that bottle of twenty-year-old, single-malt scotch.
"Tell him? Mmmm-nah! Why spoil the surprise?" He shrugged as he put the bottle back where he had gotten it from.
"Oh Merlin, get him out of here!" Tonks pleaded to Moody.
"What's the fuss about a bottle of scotch, lass?" Mad-eye wanted to know.
"Later. Please! Just get Harry away from here." Remus begged as he slammed Harry's trunk shut, shrunk it, and stuffed it in the teen's pocket.
Moody frowned, but decided to let it go. Whatever it was, it sounds like the Dursleys deserved it. "Right, lad. Grab on." He offered the frayed end of the rope to Harry, who took hold reluctantly.
"This is gonna suck." He winced as the portkey activated.
Remus and Tonks watched as the group was twirled away.
"Man, I hope someone's pretty quick with their scourify spells when that lot arrive. Portkeying with alcohol in your system does not make for a 'clean' landing." Tonks commented as they turned to release and try to reason with the Dursleys.
"Mm-hmm." Remus agreed. "Almost makes me glad that we'll be here when they land."
Tonks giggled. "Hope Dumbles thinks to take a step back when they arrive."
The Burrow.
When the whirling vortex finally threw the group at their intended destination, Harry barely noticed that they were in the Weasley kitchen. "Yeah, that sucked." He groaned as his stomach churned dangerously.
Dumbledore, resplendent in his normal, eye-wateringly colourful robes, moved forward to steady Harry. "Harry my boy, are you-"
"BLLLUUUUUUURRRRKK!"
Dumbledore looked down in horror as his favourite visiting robes suddenly gained a bit more colour than they'd possessed before he'd left Hogwarts.
"YEEUUUUUURRRRRGGG!"
Dumbledore's horror grew as Harry managed to hit the bottom four inches of the headmaster's beard that time.
When Harry looked like he was going to vomit a third time, Dumbledore finally took a step backwards to take himself out of range.
Staggering over to the kitchen sink, Harry rinsed his mouth out with a glass of water and spat the foul taste out. "Note to self; don't ever portkey again while recovering from a binge." Reaching into his pocket, he removed a couple of white pills and popped them into his mouth, washing them down with another glass of water. "That should take the edge off." He sighed.
"What did you just swallow, Harry?" Arthur asked.
Harry blinked as he finally started to process where he actually was. "Muggle paracetamol, Mr. Weasley. To help with the raging headache I've got right now."
"Why do you need them? If you have a headache, I've got some potion here that can take care of that for you easily." Mrs. Weasley said from the doorway.
Harry scratched the back of his head. "Well, I figured that once you found out that the reason I've got a headache is because its actually a hangover,"
"WHAT?" The shout came from those who hadn't realised Harry had been drunk at the Dursleys.
"-you would make me suffer through the after affects, 'to teach me a lesson about the evils of drinking', or some such stupidity." He finished with a roll of his eyes.
Dumbledore, having finished applying the necessary cleaning charms to his robes, and vanishing the bottom six inches of his beard, asked Harry why he had been drinking at the Dursleys.
"Why do people keep asking me that? Isn't it obvious?" Harry ran a hand over his face tiredly. "Look. I'm still hung over, tired, annoyed, and several other things. All I want to do is sleep. How about you let me do that, an' then I'll see about answering your questions."
Stunned, Arthur directed Harry upstairs, telling him that he would be bunking in with Ron again. As Harry made his way upstairs, he passed more Order members than he had ever seen in one place before, but was too tired to think about asking why they were all there.
Finally, he make it to Ron's room, and stumbled inside. With a sigh of pure relief, he toppled face first onto the mattress and buried his face in the pillow. Ron, Ginny and the twins, who had been following him upstairs silently, piled into the room.
"So, Harry?" George said.
"A quick question," Fred continued.
"Before you pass out." George finished.
"Make it quick, guys, I'm about to crash. And unshrink that while your at it." Harry mumbled as he pulled his trunk out of his pocket and dropped it over the edge of the bed.
George poked the miniature trunk with his wand while Fred spoke again.
"Why did you puke on the headmaster when you first arrived?"
Harry struggled to turn his head to face them all. "Apparently, booze and portkey's don't mix."
"And the second time?" George continued.
"'Cause I missed his beard with the first volley?"
The red-heads all sniggered at that. "We'll talk when you wake up, mate." Ron said. "Pleasant dreams." He waved as they all exited the room, the twins placing silencing spells on the door.
"Finally." Harry groaned as he closed his eyes.
-END OF CHAPTER-