Disclaimer in chapter 1.

Chapter XI: Escape and Evasion

"Harry!" A muddled voice filtered through his unconscious brain, waking him from his rest. He sat up slowly, ignoring the impulses of agony being sent by his strained muscles. Blinking several times to clear his vision, he looked around for the source of the sound. Sirius Black was running towards him with a look of ... was that panic?

"Harry, thank Merlin you're alive. What happened here?" Sirius asked with an edge of dread to his voice.

Harry stood as quickly as his body would allow and surveyed the clearing. It looked like a wheat field that had been hewn raggedly with a scythe. The wood had been splintered, burned to cinders in some cases, for nearly a square mile. Not a single tree stood higher than waist-level, the dirt and grass was gouged and torn as if huge claws had raked through. Grey smoke still rose from recently burned out ashes, creating a hazy fog that caught the ambient light of the rising sun and gave the clearing a surreal, silvery appearance.

"I'm not entirely certain, Sir... but I think I did this." Harry responded after a long while. His body was operable, but every muscle ached incredibly. He was suffering from a severe case of magical exhaustion, as well.

Sirius looked at his godson with a level gaze. "Explain."

Harry thought out loud. "I was angry at Ms. Julia Peverell, a civilian reporter for the Daily Prophet. More angry than I can ever remember being. I was reacting to this in an unexpected way. I felt... my body was no longer able to contain my magic. I came here to release a portion of it in a safe manner, but it was too much to hold on to. It felt like my body was on fire, I lost consciousness. I woke up to you calling my name. That's all I remember, Sir. What would you have me do?" He stood rigidly and awaited instructions.

Sirius' mind was racing. No wizard that he'd ever heard of had lost control like this. But then again, Harry was not like any other wizard he'd heard of. He'd undergone several experimental procedures to increase his magical capacity, among other things. Experimental procedures that were purely theoretical in nature before the Boy who Lived volunteered for them. The long-term effects of these experiments were completely unknown, a fact which Sirius had tried desperately (and failed) to make his godson understand.

Exhaling slowly, Sirius led his godson to a nearby pair of tree trunks that had been cleanly cut at about knee level and motioned for him to sit. They sat in silence for a full minute before Sirius asked, "And what about your magical discharges?"

Harry stared out at some fixed point in the distance. "They're getting worse. I turned my bed to ashes, melted the granite behind it. I don't understand what's happening to me, Sir."

Sirius clapped a reassuring hand on his godson's shoulder. "If anybody understands, it'll be Matheson. He'll find out what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong with me, Sir." Harry replied, with a harsher edge to it than Sirius could ever recall hearing on the young man's voice.

Despite the warning in his godson's voice, Sirius stood up and motioned to the surrounding landscape, which was still smoking in the sunlight. "Does this look right to you, Harry? What if this happens again, what if you're at Hogwarts? You know you can't use your portkey inside the wards, are you really willing to take that risk?"

Harry stared silently out into nothingness, and his godfather didn't press further. Harry was far too rational for his own good, he'd understand why he needed to go back to Dr. Matheson. As much as Sirius hated the man, he was perhaps the only mediwizard alive who knew the true extent of Harry's augmentation. He should know, as he performed most of the experimental procedures himself.

Harry Potter was running his 9th mile of the day on the treadmill, the machines he was hooked up to displayed everything from his heart rate to his blood pressure to his alpha-wave emissions. Two machines displayed nothing but thin red and green lines that wavered rapidly at seemingly random intervals. His grey patient outfit was damp with sweat from the pace he was keeping. The white-robed assistant pushed his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose again and said dismissively, "That's enough for now, thank you Mr. Potter."

Gladly acquiescing, the Boy who Lived pushed the shutoff button on the treadmill and slowed to a stop, toweling off his face while the lab assistant wrote final notes on his ever-present clipboard.

They'd been running him ragged with these strange tests. He'd been told to punch a black pad as quickly as possible, then as hard as possible, then at intervals of 3 seconds. He'd lifted weights while hooked up to the same group of machines, sparred with a man so completely covered with pads that no part of his body was visible. He was shown movies that consisted of nothing but quick flashes random images. He had thrown at least a thousand stunners in the last week, and they took his wand from him whenever he wasn't throwing stunners at a machine. They still hadn't told him anything.

Every mealtime he was given three potions and a bowl of nutrient-rich soup that had the consistency of gelatin mixed with clam chowder. He had blood drawn for testing every morning. He was poked, prodded, jolted and asked questions by the dozen. At all times, he was accompanied by a black-uniformed guard. He was huge, rough and muscular, looking more like a hired thug than a security officer.

When not undergoing tests, Harry was confined to a room with a bed, a clock on the wall and a toilet in the corner. He hated this room. He was in it for weeks at a time after his operations. They didn't allow him any personal effects, not even the picture of his Mom and Dad. He had a very acute sense of his own magic, due mostly to the procedures he'd undergone, and he could clearly tell that whatever potions they were giving him were severely restricting him. His magic was being kept at an almost impossible low level. Just a step above a squib, if he could trust his senses in this place. He couldn't even tell whether his captors were wizards or not anymore, and his stunners were almost entirely invisible instead of their usual bright red color.

How did it come to this? Stuck in the Blackholme Institute again, being force-fed some potion that might turn him permanently into a squib, unable to leave of his own volition. And where was Sirius? Why hadn't he come to visit? How long was he going to be kept in this damn Institute? He clenched his fists tightly as he sat down on the bed heavily. Breathe, Harry. Inhale, exhale. After a few moments he calmed down considerably.

I am a soldier. A soldier follows orders. When a soldier fails to follow orders, people get hurt. My orders are to stay at the Blackholme Institute for testing. When the testing is finished, I will be able to leave. Unwillingly, strange thoughts filtered into Harry's consciousness.

Why isn't Sirius here? He always visited me before. Why do they keep drawing blood, why do they keep feeding me these potions? What are they doing to me?

Harry ran over possible explanations, and found them quite slow in coming. Were the potions affecting his mental faculties as well? Anger built in him, but he quelled it ruthlessly. He couldn't afford to get angry in a place like this. What he needed were answers, and he wasn't going to find any in this room.

Standing up quietly, he walked over to the window and stared out at the endless forest that bordered the Institute. Pausing at the tree line, he noticed something strange. Last time he was at Blackholme, the forest was made up of English Elm. These trees were the same height and color, but there were fewer suckers at the base of the tree and the leaf stalks were noticeably shorter. These were Wych Elms. There were no Wych Elms within a hundred miles of Blackholme...

Spinning around, he stared at the door. How could I have missed it for so long... Where am I?! Fighting down a surge of panic, he looked at the clock on the wall. Raising his hand, he attempted to wandlessly summon it off of the wall. It didn't even shudder, even though his last pair of limiters were strewn over several acres of countryside and not on his wrists. He looked at his hand with a growing sense of dread. How could I have missed it!

This wasn't the Blackholme Institute. It was an identical copy at the very least, but it was at least a hundred miles away. What sort of tests were they running on him? He couldn't allow them to continue, regardless. His medical records were classified top secret, and these people were making their own records. He had to get out of here and notify his superiors.

Making his way silently over to the door, he tested the knob. Locked from the outside, hinges on the outside. Clever. He couldn't pick the lock and he couldn't pull the hinges off. He checked the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, it was flush. No gap whatsoever. The door was sealed tight. There were bars over the small observational window, bars over the outside windows. The air vent was bolted in place in 8 places. This room was a prison.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, he thought as rapidly as his brain would allow. His evening meal would come in less than an hour, he'd have to wait until then to make his move. The guards would be tough to get by physically, they had his wand and they carried their own. That he would allow himself to be led into a situation like this... it was inexcusable. But now was not the time for self-recrimination. He had to start planning contingencies.

He was still deep in thought half an hour later when the huge security officer led a white-robed lab assistant into the room pushing a tray of potions and the usual bowl of slop. "Good evening, Mr. Potter. Ready for your dinner?" the man asked with an air of indifference.

Harry sat rigidly on his bed and stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge either person. The assistant walked over to him and shook him slightly. "Are you feeling well, Mr. Potter?"

The Boy who Lived looked up at his captor with a blank expression on his face. Then, without warning, he fell face-first onto the tile floor.

"Mr. Potter!" The assistant shouted, pulling on his patient's arm in a futile attempt to pick him up. The black-uniformed security officer rushed over and picked Harry up by both shoulders, setting him on his feet.

Harry brought his left knee up with as much force as his body could muster, burying it into the guard's groin. Immediately, he balled up his right fist and slammed it into the bigger man's temple, sending him crashing to the floor limply. The assistant tried to shout for help, but Harry's heel impacted his jaw before he could get any sound out. He twisted a full turn and a half before hitting the bed at an odd angle and bouncing off onto the floor to join the security guard.

A quick search yielded a brass ring with several identical-looking keys on it. With more effort than it should have taken, Harry shoved the guard out of view from the observational window. After removing the assistant's white robe, identification tag and shoes, he put him under the covers and pulled the sheet up around his eyes to shield the man from view. That should buy him at least a few minutes. Donning the items and pushing the tray of potions and slop, he shut and locked the door behind him and walked down the hallway towards the testing area.

He didn't pass a single person on the short walk, strangely. How many people were in on this? Putting his ear to the metal door that led to the testing area, he kept still for a full minute before deciding that the area was clear enough to proceed. Unlocking and opening the door quietly, he pushed the tray in and shuffled behind it. There was barely enough light to see his hand in front of his face, but his eyes quickly adjusted to the low light.

A quick survey of the room told him that it was in fact empty. There were several locked drawers, one of which wouldn't unlock with any of the keys on the ring. This was it, then. With a well-placed and rather loud stomp, the drawer separated from its outside hinge and hung open partway. Harry's hand darted in and searched by touch for his quarry, finally closing around his prize. 11 inches, holly and phoenix feather, Harry thought with a small smirk of accomplishment, feeling the small but desperately needed magical boost course through his veins. Good.

With a disproportionately strong flick of his wrist and a quiet, "Accio Harry's files," at least thirty pieces of paper flew towards him, most stapled to pictures or complicated-looking graphs. Even that simple summoning spell took a good amount of his magic. After they had all gathered in a pile, he folded them in half and tucked them into the deep left pocket of his robes. "Incendio." He said, jabbing his wand at the file cabinet in the corner, destroying any proof that his files had been taken. Just in case, he grabbed one of the potions from the tray he'd been pushing and tucked that into his deep pocket as well.

As Harry approached the door, he heard a commotion on the other side, two men whispering almost unintelligibly. He surmised that they were arguing over who would be stuck with collating the files. Well, he had a compromise ready for them.

Taking a thick wooden plaque off of the wall, he gripped it tightly and kicked the door open violently. One of the assistants was right in its path, and lost consciousness the moment his head impacted the metal door. He fell boneless to the tile below. The sight of his co-worker being struck by a door elicited a shout from the other assistant, who was silenced with a dull thud as the oak plaque struck the back of his head.

Dragging both men into the room quickly, he searched them both. None of his captors carried wands, odd since he knew they were wizards. Why were they unarmed, where were the rest of the guards? Questions for another time, Harry decided. Taking the keycard off one of the assistants, he shut and locked the door behind him and continued down the hallway towards the exit.

"Leaving so soon, Mr. Potter?" A cold voice behind him caused him to whirl around, wand extended.

A man with short brown hair and strikingly handsome features stood less than thirty feet away from Harry, right where he had just passed. How did he get there without a sound? Nobody was that quiet. He had no shoes, wore baggy black pants tied with a drawstring and a black collared shirt that hung open to reveal a chiseled, lightly tanned chest. His right hand held a cane that appeared to be made of stone. He seemed completely at ease, considering that Harry's wand was pointed straight at his heart.

"I knew it was just a matter of time before you realized you were being held captive, but I honestly didn't expect it to take this long. Perhaps I overestimated you." He said in a sharp, calculating tone. "I'm afraid, however, that I can't just let you leave. I happen to be in the middle of a fascinating experiment, and if my subject dropped out halfway through it would be quite devastating to my research. Come back to your cage quietly, Mr. Potter, it's far less painful than the alternative."

Harry didn't know who this man was, but he couldn't go back to that cell now. He wordlessly shot the most powerful stunner he could manage, which still only barely glowed red. The tile in front of his captor rose in the shape of a giant hand and absorbed the stunner. No sooner did the stunner disappear than the hand split in two. The brown-haired man was still standing in an unassuming position, but the floor was moving towards him at an incredible pace.

He can transmute?! Harry didn't have the time to ponder the new development as a gigantic tile foot crashed into him, sending him flying backwards towards the exit. The man glided after him on his moving platform of tile.

Heaving, the Boy who Lived tried to catch his breath before the man on the tile platform caught up with him. He ducked under a roundhouse kick and swept out his foot to trip his opponent. His blow connected, but nearly broke his own foot as it struck a tile barrier between his sweep and the man's ankle. Biting back a curse and welcoming the adrenaline now surging through his veins, he rolled backwards and took up a defensive fighting stance.

"Surely you can do better than that, Mr. Potter. Show me your strength." He taunted, following Harry but stopping several yards away.

Gathering up all of his remaining strength, Harry plunged his hand into the ground and sent a shockwave of thick spikes rolling towards the brown-haired man.

With a sharp tap of his cane, the hallway froze and then flattened once more. "Nice try, but-" the man's taunting voice cut off as he realized he was alone in the hallway.

"He's still fast, I see. It's time for me to be going, then. At least the experiment wasn't a complete loss..." With a shrug, the man turned and walked back down the hallway towards the testing area.

Harry felt the man's footsteps grow fainter as he walked down the hallway, but it wasn't until he heard the metal door shut that he pulled himself up and out of the tile where he'd hidden himself. Once the spikes obscured his opponent's vision, he had made a hole in the floor and fell into it, covering it up once again before the attack struck except for a small slit to breathe out of. In his weakened state, the best he could hope for was that the man would not attempt to find him once he hid. The gambit paid off, this time, but he was exhausted.

Limping slightly where he kicked the tile barrier, he exited the building with all due haste and found quite a surprise waiting for him.

He was in downtown London, almost directly across from the Ministry of Magic. It was well after nightfall, how did that man manage to stay so close and still avoid detection? The windows must've been charmed to look like he was at Blackholme, but that was easy enough for a wizard. Escaping the view of the British Ministry even when less than 100 yards away from the entrance, now that was a feat worth mentioning.

Shakily, he made his way over to the phone booth and dialed 62442.

Sirius had never in his life been as furious and depressed as he was right now. He had been visiting what he thought was his godson for the past week, but Dr. Matheson said, "Harry's magical exhaustion was so severe that he is being kept in an unconscious state until we can discern the possible ramifications of waking him up before his reserves fully replenish themselves."

He knew now that it wasn't Harry he was looking at and talking to every day, and it probably wasn't even Dr. Matheson he spoke with. He'd had the wool pulled over his eyes, and he didn't even see it happening. Didn't even think it COULD happen, actually. How did they kidnap his godson from right under his nose, and what the hell did they do to him?

Dr. Matheson had been taken into custody less than 15 minutes after Harry showed up at the Ministry of Magic, he was being held for questioning in the darkest, dankest cell available. Mere minutes after his imprisonment, the polyjuice potion wore off. Whoever they had, it wasn't the one responsible for his godson's condition.

Harry showed up at the Ministry of Magic a ragged mess, but he managed to politely ask for Sirius Black before he collapsed on the floor. He was immediately carted back to base where he was fully examined by the mediwizards on staff there. His magical reserves appeared to be even lower than they were a week ago, which shouldn't have been possible. Harry's capacity was barely above that of a squib, according to test results. He'd been on a steady diet of three-meal potions and muscle regenerators, but they couldn't make his magical reserves fill up any faster. He still wouldn't talk to anyone, not even him. Harry had woken up a few hours ago, but he just stared at the picture of Prongs and Lily with the same unreadable expression on his face. Whatever happened during the week he was captive, he'd talk about it when he was ready to act.

His reserves were coming back, slowly but surely, and if preliminary tests could be trusted then he'd be back at full strength before he went back to Hogwarts. Severus Snape, among others, was hard at work identifying the potion his Godson smuggled out of the lab during his escape. It never ceased to amaze him how level-headed Harry could be in the middle of what could easily be considered a crisis. With any luck, they'd be able to get a list of ingredients and trace it back to someone who actually WAS responsible. And that was the best news Sirius Black had heard in quite a while.

"Hey, Harry. How are you feeling?" Sirius asked gently, sitting down on the corner of his godson's bunk. He hadn't left his room in nearly a week, breaking his self-imposed solitary confinement only to go on his morning runs. Nobody could keep up with him long enough to ask him questions, and talking to him in the showers just crossed the line.

The Boy who Lived looked up from the simple wood frame that contained a picture of Lily and James Potter. His green eyes blazed with their usual fierce determination. "Good as new, Sir. Is there anything I can do to assist with the investigation?"

Sirius Black nodded slightly, a smile coming to his face. "Actually, we need you to take us to the place where you were held. We can't break through the enchantments on the area, we need someone who has already been there. Hopefully, he left something useful."

Harry shook his head. "I won't let anyone enter before me. He can transmute, Sir, maybe even better than I can. He's unnaturally stealthy. I couldn't sense him from 30 feet. It might have been a side-effect of the potion I was fed, but we should proceed with caution. He is a very dangerous man."

Idly, and with no small measure of dread fascination, Sirius wondered just how good a wizard would have to be for Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived and the savior of the Wizarding World, to classify him as "very dangerous."

The green-eyed young man led three plainclothes Aurors to the location of the building he had been held, only to discover it was no longer there. A preliminary search of the magical fields in the area uncovered nothing of suspicion. It was like the place had picked up and moved. "It was right here..." Harry pointed to the line where two office buildings met. There wasn't enough space between them for a playing card.

Closing his eyes, he took two steps with his hand outstretched to verify that none of the regular enchantments were keeping him from entering. His hand impacted the outer wall of the office building right where it should. He shouldn't have been surprised, but it was awfully hard to move a building in plain sight, especially in a populated area like downtown London. I know it was right here...

A deep search of the area proved just as fruitless. There were absolutely no magical signatures of any kind. Moving a building, especially a building that big, left a signature that could be read for literally months afterwards, it wasn't the sort of thing you could conceal. Harry had never heard of a method for erasing magical signatures, it was likened to obliviating a stone. Who were these people?

After several more frustrating days of absolutely no progress in the investigation, Harry was sent back to Hogwarts. He'd never been happier to leave the base.

He arrived half an hour early, found a vacant compartment and stowed his duffel bag, eager for the downtime provided by an empty room. He needed more of it these days to control his temper. Between his suspension and the fact that he still hadn't fully recovered from whatever potions he'd been fed while an ignorant captive, he'd had no release at all from the pent-up anger he was accumulating at a startling pace.

Harry's forehead knit in frustration. It had been a huge blow to his pride, knowing that he'd willingly participated in those tests for so long. That strange man's words still reverberated in his head. Perhaps I overestimated you. He would never forget that sharp, cold voice, or the words that were breaking his confidence like an ice pick.

He was so focused on replaying the events of that week that he failed to notice the faces peeking through the door into his compartment. Muted murmuring filtered through the oak and glass, snapping him out of his self-loathing.

"Is that him?"

"Yeah, that's Harry Potter."

"Did he really tear down a mansion in a matter of seconds?"

"I heard it was just a rumor to make it easier to negotiate with kidnappers."

"I heard he killed a dozen Death Eaters with his bare hands."

"I heard he can fly without a broom!"

"Bollocks."

"Well he looks unstable, I wouldn't go near him."

"Sod off, you're just jealous because your girlfriend is making a Harry Potter scrapbook."

"What?!"

"Shh, guys he's watching us!"

Harry stood up and walked over to the door, looking into the eyes of each person on the other side of the compartment. Some of them waved, some grinned sheepishly and some shied away from the eye contact. With a short nod, he drew the blinds closed and put a silencing charm on them. He didn't need more people gossiping about him within earshot.

The ride was completely uneventful after that, not even Dorothy the snack lady bothered him.

Perhaps I overestimated you, Mr. Potter.

Harry closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

"Well, Mr. Malfoy, I must say I'm confused." A woman in her late twenties stated flatly. She was an investigative reporter; it would take more than a huge bag of galleons and dinner in a gigantic manor to keep her from asking questions.

"About what, Ms. Peverell?" the young heir of the Malfoy name asked politely as he cut his veal parmigiana into bite-sized pieces and dipped one in a blackberry mustard sauce.

Her blue eyes met his polished grey ones unblinkingly as he washed the meat down with a 1992 Château Valandraud. So he wanted to play hardball? She didn't like games, she was much more straightforward. "You've given me a lot of money and a permanent column in the Daily Prophet, all for writing a story on Harry Potter that I planned on writing anyway. I'm not that naïve. What's in it for you?"

With a soft chuckle, Draco set his goblet down and wiped his mouth delicately with the Egyptian silk napkin on his lap. "You might say I have a vested interest in Mr. Potter's popularity. I couldn't care less what you think my motives are; keep printing your articles and you can keep your job. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a portkey to catch." Draining the last of his goblet and wiping his mouth once more, he stood up and said, "Have an uneventful day, Ms. Peverell."